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Favourite songs from least favourite movies (and vice-versa)
chrisisall
Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
My absolute favourite song is Diamonds Are Forever. The movie-? I like it well enough.
I love Skyfall! The movie- not so much.
I love Never Say Never Again. The movie? Not my favourite.
I hate Thunderball, but it's one of my more well liked movies.
For Your Eyes Only almost made me cry it was so weak. The movie-? Cool beans!
Sam's The Writing's On The Wall left me cold, but I really like SPECTRE.
The two times the movie & the title song matched perfectly evenly for me was 1) Goldfinger (awesome sauce, both),
and 2) The Man With The Golden Gun (Song & movie both quickies. But, I like a good quickie)....
Thoughts?
I love Skyfall! The movie- not so much.
I love Never Say Never Again. The movie? Not my favourite.
I hate Thunderball, but it's one of my more well liked movies.
For Your Eyes Only almost made me cry it was so weak. The movie-? Cool beans!
Sam's The Writing's On The Wall left me cold, but I really like SPECTRE.
The two times the movie & the title song matched perfectly evenly for me was 1) Goldfinger (awesome sauce, both),
and 2) The Man With The Golden Gun (Song & movie both quickies. But, I like a good quickie)....
Thoughts?
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Comments
The CR67 and CR06 theme songs are among the best, but I dislike the films.
DN and YOLT are among the very best in both categories.
Not a Goldfinger fan-?
I have an opposite feeling about Spectre. I don't enjoy the film very much but warmed to Writings on the wall, even though I think it would have been better if it had been performed by a female singer.
Apart from that I often have similar feelings about the film an the titel track. Of course there are always some differences: My favourite songs are "Live and let die" and "You only live twice" and the respective films are just at the edge of my top10 film ranking. With FRWL it is the other way around but I still like the song a lot and have nothing to complain about it.
A View to a kill is often mentioned as an example where the song is much better than the film but I personally love the film so much that I would even rank it a bit higher than its title track.
DN: no real theme song, score is ok for the setting, though.
FRWL: greatest Bond movie ever, opening theme on of the best...not so thrilled about the version with lyrics
GF: one of the best Bond films, one of the best and most iconic themes
TB: great theme with nonsensical lyrics (trying to shoehorn the movie title into the song), but that's not unusual. However, for me TB is the most boring entry of the early era.
YOLT: contender for the greatest Bond theme ever. Mediocre film, not without merits, but overall borderline cringe-worthy.
OHMSS: brilliant in several regards, except the main actor, who is pedestrian and just not credible being an intelligent secret agent. Could have been much better with another protagonist. No real theme song, but "We Have All the Time in the World" is probably my favourite song from the entire series, and I was sort of moved to tears when they revived in in NTTD.
DAF: great theme (as all other John Barry/Shirley Bassey songs) for an inferior movie (that still is some sort of fun)
LALD: brilliant theme by Paul McCartney as part of the best non-Barry score of the series. The movie is probably so-so, though I have a special nostalgial relationship to it and probably "like" it the best of all the Moore films (note: this does not mean I find it the "best" movie of those. Just that I have that relationship and keep enjoying it.)
TMWTGG: A phoned-in condensed Barry score reflected in a nonsensical Lulu song. Not the worst theme, but nothing special. Basically the same as the movie is in comparison.
TSWLM: "Nobody Does It Better" is still the best thing about this film, which I find has aged terribly (including its score) and can be dated as such. The theme is probably among my top three, but the movie keeps dropping toward my bottom third.
MR: brilliant theme as part of a brilliant score, probably one of Barry's best. The movie keeps growing on me, and I did refuse to watch it in the cinema because I thought the idea of Bond going to space (just to emulate Star Wars) was preposterous. But it just may be my favourite Moore film by now.
FYEO: OK theme (no more) for a better-than-OK movie, whose score otherwise is disappointing and today at least terribly dated, with its disco-type noise.
OP: "All Time High" is not as bad as might be expected from the first song which didn't dare to quote the movie title. Not as great either, but quite nice for an overall inferior Bond movie. So yeah, the song is probably one of the better ingredients of the finished product.
AVTAK: The movie is in by bottom three or four, and I could never relate to that Duran Duran stuff, so both are probably bargain-basement quality for me.
TLD: Great movie after what preceded it, but that a-ha music never appealed to me. I understand that John Barry had a similar problem with them.
LTK: Now here's a great theme, finally reviving the great Bond feeling of the GF/TB-period after all. On my personal scale, probably better than the movie is overall (and I don't hate that one at all).
GE: I love the theme, but then I love Tina Turner anyway. Best Brosnan movie, but really only second-level stuff in the history of the franchise.
TND: Second-best Brosnan film. The Sheryl Crow song is ok, but the original theme by k.d. lang (condemned to end up in the closing credits later) is infinitely better. For me, a real contender for best Bond theme ever if they had given it the chance. The movie? Yeah, well, better than the majority, but nothing outstanding.
TWINE: The theme is probably the best thing about this mess of a movie. Though I had never heard of Garbage before, nor have so after this film.
DAD: Two messes ending up together in the dump. Neither the theme nor the movie has any redeeming qualities.
CR: Sort of like with TWINE's Garbage, I had never heard of Chris Cornell before (I simply stopped listening to popular music in the '80s and only made up for it in the 2000s). But I liked this "new" approach to a Bond theme. So yes, thumbs up for YKMN! Fitting, but not really formative for what was then the best Bond movie in 42 years.
QOS: I could not believe they meant it when I listened to an early video of AWTD. But within the context, I started appreciating it more. A chaotic piece of music, being adequate to the mess the editor made of this movie which otherwise might have been a decent addition to the series.
SF: I'm not a fan of Adele's. Let's suffice to say her theme didn't take much away from the brilliant movie that SF turned out to be, one of my top four ever since.
SP: Oh my god...let's say the mediocrity of the movie is not remedied by the falsetto whining of the theme. I don't like it.
NTTD: The theme left me cold, but then, I only heard it consciously maybe three times. It definitely was not bad enough to spoil my enthusiasm for one of the best Bond movies ever.
It was a minor tantrum. :P
The film is in my top 10, but I'm undecided about the song. Barry's arrangement is top notch, but I don't like the voice part. So in the recent ranking game, I didn't know whether to rank it 10th or 20th.
With FRWL it's the other way round. The instrumental theme is a favourite of mine, but I'm undecided about the film; quite on the boring side, but also one of the most stylish ones.
+1
You Only Live Twice
Diamonds Are Forever
Movies I like with Songs I don't:
I might have said Licence to Kill a week or so ago, but the song is really growing on me.
I know, right? I initially thought that song sucked, but there's a smoothness to it & a bass pounding that has worked its way into me over the years....
For sure, it’s catchy as hell despite all odds, and the callbacks in the instrumentation don’t hurt at all either.
I actually like that song a lot. K D Lang's song in the end credits would have been better IMO, but I can't fault the one they used at all.
Slightly off-topic, what irritates me most about LTK (the theme) is that it sounds indeed like "Licence to Kill" in the movie credits, but definitely like "Licence to Kilt" on the soundtrack CD and also some samplers. A practical joke by a Scottish sound engineer? A mistake later eliminated for the movie itself? (And yes, I'm sure someone mentioned it on this board at some time before I ever joined.)
Hah, interesting, the version I listen to on Spotify doesn't seem to sound like "kilt", but maybe it does compared to some other version.
Die Another Day
Diamonds Are Forever
Another Way to Die (QoS)
Song I dislike from a movie I like:
License to Kill
The rest seem to match up pretty well with like/like and dislike/dislike situations.
I’ll defend the DAD title song all day despite not even being a Madonna fan. It’s ridiculous but different and catchy and has a lot of cool production flourishes.
And I’ve mentioned this elswehere on the forum, but I think the LTK title song is such a tonal mismatch for the movie. But I’ll say this, the song seems quite popular to this day and I hear it every now and then out in the real world, which is neat and always unexpected.
LTK is for me one of the very best themes. Gladys Knight was a wonderful choice of singer and gives it her all!
NTTD is not a theme I would listen to on its own, but it works well for the movie!
LTK: top 5 favorite movie, one of my least-liked songs
Oh my, I DO concur!!!!
Agreed, this is a good one. The TB score is so great I often forget about the title song entirely.
Wheras I understand your ranking of SF, I dont go along with yiur view of Adeles song. Never did anything for me!
The Man with the Golden Gun is a crap film, but somehow that jaunty, jazzy song makes me believe in Bond.
Tom Jones singing about his thunderballs is a transcendent musical experience!
Most overrated song: Goldfinger
Most underrated song: Moonraker
The only Bond theme among the Craig films that I find better than average is YKMN. The other four were among the bottom third of the entire franchise for me.
Live and Let Die is a bit of a clumsy entry but I'll be goddamned if that doesn't have possibly the very best theme in the series' history. There's a reason why it's the only theme song I've ever heard played on the radio.