The New Bond Theme

Argh! NO!!!

In a fine bit of keeping up with convention, Jack White and Alicia Keys are the latest musical talents to totally fail at writing a decent Bond Theme.

It's a tough job for anyone, as Chris Cornell found out and as Madonna simply shut her mind to. I mean the last really satisfactory example for me was the frankly genius theme to Goldeneye written by Bono and the Edge for Tina Turner as well as the lost theme written by K.D. Lang and heard at the end of "tomorrow never dies".

The problem is that people want too much from a Bond theme - it's got to be original and exciting but also slavishly following the conventions. White and Keys' effort is heavy on both, but comes out sounding like a total mess - the song would have benefited from one of them admitting defeat and letting the other one sing the whole song instead of an ill advised duet (in the same register, for some bizarre reason).

It's quite shocking, given the millions of options available to them, that White insists on playing a typical Jack White guitar solo halfway through (sounding, as always, like a screaming wasp) and Key's wails in a call/response mode a la the most irritating Robert Plant moments.

It doesn't do anything new or interesting with the "bond theme" genre. It's a real disappointment, just like the last three times. Ah well... at least the film is going to be awesome.

A

Have you heard it? What did you think?