Do these young singers not know how to enunciate properly?
Glad to see that I'm not the only one who wondered about enunciation. When the song began, I didn't understand any of the lyrics. Picked up a few words here and there later on. Nothing in the song appealed to me, but maybe if it is used in the underscore, I'll like it better.
In recent years the song is stand alone rather than part of the score. Singer/songwriters are rarely composers and composers are rarely songwriters. I don't think this song is melodic enough for an orchestral arrangement. Just my opinion.
"You Know My Name" is still my favorite "newer" Bond song. Of course, it helps that Casino Royale is an amazing movie too and none of the Daniel Craig entries have lived up to that first film. This song isn't as horrible as some of the other recent Bond songs, but the arrangement on this is very sparse. It needs some drums and percussive elements to keep it moving along. I hope the score doesn't end up being this monotonous droning thing followed by a few guitar riffs. I miss David Arnold.
In my opinion it's easily the best Bond song since "You Know My Name", and as it took some while to warm to that it may be that NTTD (heh, am I the first?) grows as well.
And although you may not like it as a stand-alone experience, its pretty pointless condemning it as a Bond song until it's seen in the context of the pre-credit sequence (if there is one), because context is everything.
I've heard it now twice and like it. Good Bond Song. Both seeped in the Bond tradition without bending over to it; it's a pretty cool contemporary Bond song.
I agree. I also listened to it more than once and it has a definite Bond feel to it...I like it. To be honest, this is the first time I've heard Eilish and she seems suited to the song. It could certainly have been a lot worse
And although you may not like it as a stand-alone experience, its pretty pointless condemning it as a Bond song until it's seen in the context of the pre-credit sequence (if there is one), because context is everything.
Not necessarily. A lot of the best songs are just damned good songs. I hate to harp on the same one, but "You KNow My Name" is just an absolutle belter that I felt was a great song the moment I heard it.
I get the context of "The Man With the Golden Gun" and it's still shittake. As is "Another Way to Die." And "Die Another Day." Context is actually not that importent in this case. It is potentially important to understand what she's singing about but that's not a "it's a good song when you see the movie" thing. This is a mumbling mass of sadness, regardless of the context. It may grow on me, but for an adventure film, it's lifeless.
I originally thought this was from the new Bond film.
I like both this and the theme song in question a great deal. I am indeed sullen and bothered by weighty thoughts. Somebody nailed the crux of things though... if you watch Bond films for adventure and fun, this ain't your bag. Craig Bond is more about loneliness, sacrifice, and the stark reality of murder. It is a noble tragedy, at least to me. I also agree that Casino Royale is unmatched as yet.
If your realm of music is Sisters Of Mercy, Gary Numan, or now in this case Billie Eilish, you're getting good tragedy.
Other Bond works have at times been hopeful romance themes. But I would argue at their best, themes were permutated into tragic elegies. Moonraker (?) and You Only Live Twice, or the denouements of OHMSS come to mind.
It's beyond awful. Sam Smith's "song" was for me the one big misstep in Spectre but this makes Writing's On The Wall sound like Goldfinger. If you play it at double speed it doesn't sound any worse. What a dreary, dismal, and entirely musically uninteresting dirge.
Music is music so you can make judgments quite easily.
However, songs are music plus lyrics (or lyrics only) so, in order to make a judgment, you have to be able to hear the lyrics.
Sadly, after several attempts, I couldn't - simply because this singer's diction is appalling. Apart from the obvious "no time to die" most of the rest was indecipherable.
A search on youtube eventually unearthed a version displaying the lyrics.
For what it is, the orchestral arrangements are not bad and there is vaguely a "Bond"-ish sound. However, the poor choice and the performance of this singer for such an important gig makes it a no-no.
It will be interesting to hear what future cover versions by better equipped singers can make of this song.
But, to my ears at least, it only seems to have that vaguely Bond sound because of the opening chords* - Em - C - A (which transposed is the opening three chords for the You Know My Name intro and the repeated chords of the verse in Skyfall), and they're not that dissimilar to the main Bond theme chords of Em - C/E - Em6 (you can put melody notes of B - C - C# over both). To my ear, Thomas Newman used Em - C - A in his two scores and they're also the first three in this song.
But it has no energy, it has no passion, it has no drive about it. It's mumbled to the extent that it might as well be in Klingon, unless you read the lyrics, and then it still might as well be in Klingon. I just hope its not indicative of the film itself.
* if five melody notes are enough to draw comparison between King's Row and Star Wars, or indeed three notes enough to compare Bali H'ai to The Bride Of Frankenstein, then three chords should certainly be enough here, especially as two chords from Goldfinger got John Barry a credit on Licence To Kill!
As with most Bond songs they lack the amount of vocal material keeping it short & sweet, For an 18 year old that song was pretty neat that had the Bond flavour with the emotional content the vocal build up or minimal vocalism with the orchestrations sounds better than what I've heard in a good while.
