Skip to main content

Skyfall by Adele

 
James Bond theme songs are a genre unto themselves - often overblown, or silly, or somewhat contrived (Thunderball faintly comical though sublime) - the best of them such as the Shirley Basseys, especially the all-time great, 'Goldfinger' - are crowd-pleasing classics, timeless.  Adele has been selected for Skyfall, and, given she was the best-selling British female singer of all time, and the currently most popular, this was the right commercial and artistic choice, rendered faintly ironic by Adele's figure and down to earth humanity, which nicely cut across the sexist imperatives of the Bond opening trailers.  If you live in the UK you have already bought the song today or heard it, likely - it's the top song currently at iTunes.  So what do you think?  Well, it's a little Carly Simon, and a lot Bassey.  That suits this being the Bond 50th year.  It has the usual nonsense lyrics (what is Moonraker for instance?).  I like "you can have my number take my name/ but you can never have my heart" - a sort of quasi-judicial riposte.  There have been jokes about the skyfole/ tumbole pronunciation - but mostly it is a deliciously sweeping and romantic addition to the canon, and, nicely, one of the least aggressive.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...
1 comment
Read more