The Best (and Worst) James Bond Themes - Part 2

[You can read my introduction to this series, along with the bottom five songs, here.]

25. "Die Another Day", Madonna, Die Another Day
24. "Another Way To Die", Jack White and Alicia Keys, Quantum of Solace
23. "Tomorrow Never Dies", Sheryl Crow, Tomorrow Never Dies
22."For Your Eyes Only", Sheena Easton, For Your Eyes Only
21. "All Time High", Rita Coolidge, Octopussy

20. "The Man with the Golden Gun", Lulu, The Man with the Golden Gun

Lulu was huge in the United Kingdom by 1974, when she was tapped by John Barry to sing the theme song for the next Bond entry.  She had a huge hit in the UK with "Shout", was a co-winner of the Eurovision contest, and had even hit number one in the United States with the title song from "To Sir, with Love" in 1967.  But her weak vocal styling, combined with what even Barry agreed was one his worst jobs providing score and theme in a Bond film, creates a parody of a Bond theme.

The song opens strong, true to the Bond formula - strong brass, aggressive percussion, and then an electric guitar theme that perfectly mirrored the rock music tastes of the time.  And then Lulu starts singing some of the tackiest and most suggestive words to find their way into a Bond theme.  "He has a powerful weapon..."  Her nasal tones and vibrato on long notes make this sound like an American Idol contestant covering the song.  It has a remarkable karaoke quality to it, but part of that feels built in to the song.  I am not sure that a better artist could have made the song less crappy. But it does beat out "We're an all time hiiiigh...."

Grade: C-

19. "The Living Daylights", a-ha, The Living Daylights

Fresh off the success of "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran, composer John Barry and the producers were looking for an artist that could hit the charts again with "The Living Daylights".  Their first consideration had been Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, but they eventually settled on Norwegians a-ha, the first non-English speaking artist to record a Bond theme.  (Can you imagine two more opposite artists from this era?  Then perhaps I shouldn't mention that Alice Cooper claims his song "The Man with the Golden Gun" was considered in place of Lulu.)

By itself, the song is not a bad one.  It combines traditional sound with the emerging electronic instrumentation of the mid-1980s, and allowed a sequence where Morten Harket could plunge into his trademark falsetto made famous by "Take On Me".  But it fails as a Bond theme on several counts.  Sure, the theme mentions the name of the movie, but that's about the only connection the lyrics have to Bond.  They are largely nonsensical, and combined with Harket's occasionally thick accent, they are hard to make out much less comprehend.  And another sign of a weak theme - it doesn't have a reprise in the credits.  That honor goes to the Pretenders and "If There Was a Man".

Then again, perhaps I expected too much.  This was a Dalton film, after all.

Grade: C

18. "Live and Let Die", Paul McCartney and Wings, Live and Let Die

By 1973, John Barry was ready for a respite from Bond films.  So he temporarily turned his duties over to George Martin.  Yes, that George Martin.  It's no surprise that Martin turned to former Beatle Paul McCartney, who was at that time the most successful post-Beatles solo artist, to come up with the theme song.  And given the subject matter, that was no easy task.  Live and Let Die was released at the height of the "blaxploitation" era - in fact, it was selected as the next film specifically to take advantage of that - and it is filled with stereotypes that would be considered inappropriate in a mainstream film today.

I suppose this is one song where I diverge dramatcially from critics and most of the public.  "Live and Let Die" was a big hit in the UK and the US, and received both Grammy and Oscar nominations for best song from a film.  And I grant that the more aggressive parts of the song are appropriate for a Bond film and perfectly suited to adaptation during the movie.  But the bridge - oh, the bridge is awful.  And the changes in tempo are too much for my taste, too.  Further, the film went to great lengths to incorporate the cultures of New Orleans, Harlem, and the Carribean.  This song doesn't seem to reflect any of them to me.

I am a traditionalist when it comes to these songs.  I suppose this was just too dramatic of a change.

Grade: C

17. "Never Say Never Again", Lani Hall, Never Say Never Again

Many hard core Bond fans have mixed but mainly negative feelings about the non-EON remake of Thunderball, titled Never Say Never Again in reference to Sir Sean Connery's vow to permanently reject future James Bond roles.  One bit of anecdotal evidence in this regard - the title sequence of this film is not clipped on YouTube.  In its place are several amateur mashups of how the opening credits and theme should have looked, if this movie weren't such a bastard of the canon.  (Hrm, "bastard of the canon" sounds like a character in Les Miserables. But, as usual, I digress.)

Anyway, about Lani Hall.  She is easily the most obscure artists to give voice to any Bond theme.  Before laying down this track in 1983, she was best known as a bossa nova artist with Sergio Mendes, and as Herb Alpert's wife.  Oh, and she won a Grammy in 1985.  It's hard to write an entire paragraph about Hall.  So I'll spend two sentences on how hard it was instead.

This song lands at number 17 on our survey for one overarching reason - mediocrity.  The vocals are ordinary, and the lyrics are average.  The song has some redeeming aspects - for one, the verses build in melody and volume to a refrain, a common element in Bond themes.  However, the refrain is pretty awful.  Like that kid in your homeroom class whose name you cannot remember because he never did anything noteworthy, this is a forgettable theme in a forgettable film.

Grade: C

16. "We Have All the Time in the World", Louis Armstrong, On Her Majesty's Secret Service

For casual fans, as well as most die-hard Bond aficiandos, a Bond theme requires lyrics.  It's what we have come to expect from the artists.  However, this was not always the case, especially with the early films in the series.  On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the films with two entries on our list; because incorporating the title of this movie into the theme song was unwieldy, the film got an instrumental opening theme and a this vocalized end credits theme, by jazz impresario Louis Armstrong.

Because of the legendary status of Armstrong, the fact that this was his last recording, and the subsequent use of the song in advertising campaigns, "We Have All the Time in the World" is generally looked upon with favor by the public.  However, as a Bond theme - an action theme - it clearly fails.  Written by John Barry and Hal David, this is a love theme, focused on James and Tracy, and reprised throughout the film during generally tender moments (not counting Bond's burglary of the law office in Switzerland).

Based solely on Bond theme criteria this song would have landed in the bottom eight.  But this was Barry's fifth Bond film, and by this point he had established a tone - I hesitate to use the word "theme" - that created a thread between films.  This song fits well into that overall tone.  And if that wasn't enough, the composition of the escalating strings line in the background was brilliant, and perfectly suited for reprises during the film itself.  It adds to my enjoyment of this hard-to-love film that it has one of the best scores on a Bond film.

Grade: C+

Leaving Rush Limbaugh

I lost a friend today over Obama's budget, of all things. He displayed a graph on his blog showing the dramatic increased in proposed deficit spending in Obama's next budget. I explained to him that a large part of the reason for this was that Obama eliminated a lot of accounting tricks used by the Bush administration, particularly regarding war spending, to make the deficit look better than it was. He response to me was that I needed to stop "drinking the Koolaid [sic]". And so I explained to him that the reason I was able to stay good friends with some of our mutual friends with whom I disagreed was because we could discuss and disagree and be civil. If he was unserious enough that he had to resort to name-calling, then we could no longer be friends. Sure, that was my choice, but we face serious problems, and now is not the time for people without solutions to get in the way.

Yesterday, on a drive across North Carolina, I listened to Rush Limbaugh's address to CPAC. And I have come to the same conclusion about him.

"[T]he racism, the sexism, the bigotry that we're all charged with, just so you across the United States of America know, and you'll see demonstrated here as the afternoon goes on, doesn't exist on our side. We want everybody to succeed."

Really?

Rush, you are a racist. You have been a racist across four decades of "excellence" in broadcasting. In the 70s, you told a black caller to "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." In the 90s, you said "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" When Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman in the U.S. Senate, was mentioned on your show, you would play the theme "Movin' On Up" from the television show "The Jeffersons". When a caller told you that black people need to be heard, you replied, "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?" You even claimed that Donovan McNabb, the long-time Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, got too much credit for the success of his team because he was black, and that the media wants to see blacks do well. And you opined, "Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

This is not the surface racism that has some people referring to "good niggers" and "bad niggers". And these are not the once-in-a-lifetime racial misquotes of a sincerely open-minded person. These are the philosophical statements of a man who clearly believes to his core that non-whites are less than whites. Someone who believes that whites are superior. Someone so unserious that he will viciously insult millions of people to get laughs from millions of other people.

You are a racist, Rush. There, I said it.

Oh, did I mention that you are a sexist bigot, too? Using a drawn out syllable to call Hillary Clinton a "bitch" while claiming you didn't. Stating that John Edwards' wife "might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." Claiming that Rev. Al Sharpton was concerned about the Duke lacrosse rape case because he was "trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team ... supposedly, you know, raped some, uh, hos." [Racism AND sexism – a two-fer!] Repeatedly referring to women activists as "feminazis" (a quick search of your website shows over 60 uses of the term). And even in this speech, calling CBS's Maggie Rodriguez an "anchorette," and then jokingly apologizing for it.

And now, you want to convene a summit of women because "I want some of these women to start telling me what it is I must do to close the gender gap — or, if not what it is I must do to close the gender gap, what it is I've done that has caused the gender gap." I thought you were a man of principles, Rush. A man who is telling conservatives not to change, that, like a diamond, "conservatism is…forever". Yet you are willing to ask women what you "must do" – differently, of course – to win their support.

"Also, for those of you in the Drive-By Media watching, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I've said. [Cheers and Applause ] And nor do any of us need a teleprompter, because our beliefs are not the result of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. Our beliefs are our hearts. We don't have to make notes about what we believe. We don't have to write down, oh do I believe it do I believe that we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively."

Racist, sexist, and now hypocrite.

"We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government."

"We don't want to tell anybody how to live. That's up to you."

Then why are you in my bedroom? Why are you telling me what I can and cannot do with my body, the one gift with which I was endowed by my "Creator"? Why are you telling me I can love anyone I want, as long as you approve of my choice of gender? Am I not a better person, a happier person, a better contributor to society, if I am free to love who I want, and to have his support in my life? If I love someone, and my government tells me, "No, you are not allowed to love him," won't that make me less happy? Won't it make me resentful? And, in Republican terms, won't that make me a less productive input into GDP? If I am unhappy at home, and in my most intimate, personal choices and commitments, how can I be fully happy in anything else I do? How can I reach my potential and be the "best" that you say you want me to be?

You are also a liar, Rush.

"They don't have the right to take money that's not theirs, from the back pockets of producers, and give it to groups like ACORN, which are going to advance the Democrat Party."

First, neither President Obama nor the Congress is trying to give money to ACORN. (Paraphrasing Jerry Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with" ACORN.) But it is a lie to say the ARRA is going to give them money. ACORN is eligible for grants in the act, just like you are. But it would be just as much a lie for me to state on my blog that "Republicans in Congress allowed a bill through that would take your money and give billions to Rush Limbaugh." Further, it is true that the money is not "theirs". But that is a spurious argument. This is a republic. We chose representatives to make decisions for us. And the majority of those representatives set the tax and revenue policies, and set the priorities for spending. The money is ours, but we have given the authority to spend it to them. If you don't like that, perhaps you should win a few elections and change it.

"In fact, the money he's spending is not ours. He's spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable. It will not work. This has been tried around the world. And every time it's been tried, it's a failed disaster."

Your willful hypocrisy and irony are blinding, Rush. You cannot admit that this is exactly what Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both did for 16 years. They spent our great-grandchildren into a gaping hole. And you are correct that it is not sustainable. It is an aggravating factor in the current economy. Reagan and George H. W. Bush spent us trillions into the hole. Clinton reversed the trend and even passed four consecutive surplus budgets. Bush has done even worse deficit spending than his father, and that doesn't include all the war spending accounting tricks to make the deficit look better than it was. I've seen the charts showing Obama's proposed budget and deficit spending, some estimates up to $2.5 trillion in one fiscal year. I don't know where the final number will end up. But I know that because of the inaction and failures of the last several years, drastic measures are required.

"Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion."

Then how come it was okay when "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush was doing it? He added trillions to the national debt.

"I have learned how to tweak liberals everywhere. I do it instinctively now. Tweak them in the media. And no reason to be afraid of these people. Why in the world would you be afraid of the deranged? There really is no reason to be afraid of them. And there's no reason to assume they're the minority. And there's no reason to let them set all the premises and all the agendas to which we respond to."

Again, calling names is not a strategy. Referring to my party as the "Democrat Party" seven times because you think it tweaks us is not a solution; it is childishness. But I have a better rebuttal.

"We, ladies and gentlemen, have challenges that are part and parcel of a movement that feels it has just suffered a humiliating defeat when it's not humiliating. This wasn't a landslide victory, 52 to, what, 46. Fifty-eight million people voted against Obama."

Actually, had you wanted to be more negative, you could have said that almost 62 million people voted against Obama. But almost 70 million Americans did choose him. Obama beat McCain by 9,500,000 votes, the largest margin of victory since 1984. Your party lost 14 seats in the Senate and 53 seats in the House in the last two elections – that's nearly one-quarter of your members. So it is not just at the national level that your ideas have lost. They have also lost among the 435 individual constituencies in our country, too. Your platform did not just lose one election – it has lost dozens.

"We don't have the votes in Capitol Hill to stop what's going to happen. What we can do is slow it down, procedure, parliamentary procedures, slow it down and do the best we can to inform the American people of what's really on the horizon."

And now you're making sense. You don't have the votes to win on most party line issues. But you don't propose better ideas, ideas that can win. Instead, you suggest obstruction and delay. Just like insults, neither of these ideas will make someone's life better.

"[Obama] wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated."

I'm sorry, Rush, are you sure you didn't mean President Bush? Because after 9/11, Bush had the chance to unite this country and to ask us to sacrifice as Americans for the common good. Instead, he and his people sowed fear, doubt and mistrust among and between us, and used the uncertainty and the confusion to soil the Constitution, the document you claim to love. Do you only love it during Republican eras?

"When I look out at you in this audience, I don't see a Walmart voter. And I don't see a black, and I don't see a woman, and I don't see a Hispanic. I see human beings who happen to be fortunate enough to be the luckiest people on Earth since you are Americans."

Actually, Rush, I think the reason you didn't see a black, or a woman, or a Hispanic, or a Wal-Mart voter in the room is because there weren't any at CPAC! But I digress with my snarkiness…

"So as you leave here, as you leave here optimism, confidence, not guilt, it's not worth it. There's nothing to be guilty about. Don't treat people as children. Respect their intelligence. Realize that there's a way to persuade people. Sometimes the worst way is to get in their face and point a finger. Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion is obvious. Let them think they came up with the idea themselves. They'll think they're smart that they figured it out. Who cares how you persuade them, the fact they can be persuaded is factually correct, it's possible"

So regarding what position are you trying to persuade me? What ideas do you have for leading our country? You claimed to detail what conservatism is, but you barely scratched the surface. And other than jokes, and pointing fingers, and calling names, you have not suggested any alternatives. Do you want Republicans to be in charge, making the decisions, and driving the agenda again? Of course you do. So suggest something. As long as you have no ideas, as long as all you can do is tear others down, your good wishes for our country will not matter. You will not win elections.

"Joe Biden was mystified how Bobby Jindal got his shift off at 7-Eleven that night to make the speech. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Time out. Suspend speech for explanation. People watching at home. I'm glad this happened. Glad this happened. You think I just made a joke, an ethnic joke about Bobby Jindal, don't you? I didn't. I made a joke about the bigotry of the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden."

I try to keep myself open-minded. I don't prefer people who are mindless followers of any media personality. Yet I do agree with Keith Olbermann when he calls you a comedian. Rush, you are an intelligent and creative man. But you are unserious. You are a comedian. You may have some worthy ideas, but they get lost in the insults and the racism and the bigotry and the cheap laughs that you yourself display.

It's true that Vice President Biden made a comment about Indian-Americans during the 2008 campaign. And he explained them. The vice president does not have a lengthy dossier underscoring a pervasive bigotry like you do, Rush. But that is not even the worst part of your statement. The worst part is this: will calling the Vice President a bigot save anyone's home? Will it get anyone a job? Will it get health care for those who cannot afford it? Will it educate a child? Will it eradicate cancer? Will making a joke about John Kerry's skin color do any of these things? So, then, if you are truly interested in leading, in finding solutions, in being compassionate, then why are you wasting your first "address to the nation" on such empty punch lines?

It is because you are an unserious comedian.

I laugh at Bill Maher sometimes. He skewers liberals occasionally but saves his heavy ammunition for Republicans (and God). And sometimes he crosses the line into tastelessness. But he is also politically minded. He is aware of current events. He advocates some positions I can support, like the legalization of marijuana. But I no more want Democrats to follow him as a political leader than I think Republicans should be following you now. Put it this way – just like the president and just like you, Rush, Bill Maher is an excellent communicator. However, there is a world of difference between using inspiration, hope and ideas, and using humor as the vehicle to a destination. Comedians like you and Bill and Jon Stewart can inform and entertain people enough to win them over to a cause. But when it comes time to translate that into action, the comedian has nothing left to offer. There is no "there" there. Liberals laugh at Maher, but follow Obama. Conservatives have found both in you. That kind of vacant leadership is dangerous for our country.

I should be thrilled that both conservatives and you yourself want you to be anointed the new leader of the Republican Party. It should only lead to more gains for Democrats and progressives. But I can't be happy about that. That kind of political debate is not healthy for America. I want real ideas on both sides, and I want our people and our leaders to choose from among them. Because I know that Democrats do not have all the answers. And when we are wrong, which is often, there should be other ideas out there. Republicans have good ideas about some things. (I can admit that about my political opponents, Rush. You are incapable of that.) I want an active and vibrant Republican Party to contribute to the constructive debate about how to keep our country strong. A party that follows your comedy shows is not capable of fulfilling that role.

And so I have made a decision. For years, I have listened to you from time to time. I wanted to know what my conservative friends were hearing, and what ideas were in vogue on the other side. I wanted to be educated about you so that I could fairly criticize you when appropriate – and it was nearly always appropriate. But yesterday, you revealed yourself to be the unserious comedian that many have always expected. You are not a philosopher and you are not a political leader. You are a joker with a drive-time radio show, intelligent but boorish, willing to say anything for outrage or for a laugh.

So as I divorced CNN over a year ago, I am leaving you in the dust, too. I am not listening anymore. I am not keeping tabs on you. I am not following your latest outrage on Media Matters. I am not discussing you with friends or opponents. I am not boycotting your advertisers. I am ceasing to care about you politically because you are an unserious comedian. Rather than refusing to listen to you because you are a Republican, I have chosen to ignore you like I ignore Dane Cook – because you are not funny.