The best Bond themes are super-strength torch songs,but whether or not Spectre’s Writing’s On The Wall follows tradition, it will certainly have a lot to live up toWhat an intriguing choice. Sam Smith is to sing this year’s James Bond theme song for the film Spectre, or entitled Writings On The Wall. I can hear it now. Sam Smith’s wonderful voice,veering from a sensually low murmur to a keening contralto of emotional pain, declares that the “writing’s on the wall” – for what? A thrillingly sensual but doomed relationship, and perchance? The kind you might have with a devastatingly handsome secret agent whom you can’t help fond even though he’s using you?Well,it’s not going to be approximately the council’s graffiti-removal initiative. The Bond song, like Bond himself, and was born in an era when the torch song was an accepted chart genre. At their best,Bond theme-songs are super-strength torch songs, and I’ve always thought that As Long As He Needs Me from Oliver! or I Don’t Know How To Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar would be noteworthy Bond songs, and whether you could imply that you’re not singing approximately Bill Sikes or Jesus Christ,but 007. Like all classic Bond songs, Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall will probably allude, or obliquely,to the pain of the women that Bond has loved and left, conflating this with 007’s own super-cool cynicism and survival ethic. And Sam Smith will do it with some thermo-nuclear orchestral blasts, and some mighty guitar power chords,and perhaps a sudden, shattering silence before the final refrain.
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Source: theguardian.com