It’s a mixed bag of a film, but there’s still a lot to love about newest James Bond movie, Spectre. It looks great, it sounds great, and the action is some of the best the series has ever produced. It also has one hell of a title sequence, a throwback to classic Bond titles in all ways except one: the tune that plays over it doesn’t hold a candle to great 007 themes of old.
Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On The Wall” isn’t offensively bad – it’s at least, not obviously, ostentatiously terrible like Alicia Keys and Jack White’s “Another Way to Die” from Quantum of Solace – it’s just entirely unmemorable.
[zergpaid]For a film that goes as big and bold as Spectre does, you expect a big, confident theme to match. Instead, “Writing’s On The Wall” just sounds lazy and lyrically uninspired, lending credence to Smith’s claim that he wrote it in under half an hour.
With Spectre now in cinemas in the US, it’s a good time to remember that artists responsible for the Bond theme can do far, far better than this. And on that note, here are ten past Bond themes that are infinitely better than “Writing’s On The Wall.”