Adele’s theme for new Bond film Skyfall released

Track revealed on the 50th anniversary of James Bond’s debut on the big screen, but does it match up to the glories of the past?

By Caroline Crampton

The theme for the new Bond film, Skyfall, was revealed in full just after midnight – have a listen.

It’s performed by Adele, and co-written by the singer and Paul Epworth.

Initially, I found, the instinct is to react with excitement. A new Adele song! And with the added majesty and grandeur of the Bond franchise! Why on earth wouldn’t you be delighted about that?

But on the third or fourth listen, you can’t help feeling that it’s all a bit two-dimensional to get really worked up about. Not a bad ballad, but where’s the magic? Sure, Adele can pull off an awkward rising interval (the jump in pitch between the syllables of “Sky-FALL” isn’t a particularly friendly one for a singer) with a panache that even Shirley Bassey might have envied (she had a similar challenge on the “fing” of “Goldfinger”). With the swooping strings and the low buzz of brass in the background as the song builds you can’t help but be aware that you’re in filmic territory, but I do miss the raw crunchiness that I associate with a good Adele song.

Perhaps I’m being over-analytical. Bond films and their themes of the last decade or so have all been a bit flat – enjoyable blockbusters, of course, but the iconic status the franchise enjoys is almost entirely based in a nostalgic harking-back to the Sean Connery days, rather than any modern glories. Casino Royale is the notable exception, being a genuinely good film (and as was pointed out to me on Twitter, a decent theme effort by Chris Cornell). Coincidentally – or perhaps not – it was also the least traditionally Bond-esque film for ages.

By keeping it quite simple Adele’s found a decent solution to a tricky problem, then. And as @EosChater points out, her estuary pronunciation of the film’s title is brilliant: