I can offer up no better ’24’ song than Lana Del Rey’s rejected Bond theme, released on her 2015 album Honeymoon.
This track was reportedly submitted for Spectre, the 24th Bond film, but turned down in favor of Sam Smith’s garbage song ‘Writing’s On the Wall.’ Although it was trashed by critics, ‘Writing’s On the Wall’ went on to win both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Song. Weak.
I’ve always said that pretty much any Lana Del Rey song could be a James Bond theme. Her music is so lush and seductive, so retro romantic, that it’s made to play against floating silhouettes of guns and naked women.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Bond producers asked Del Rey to write a song for their latest film, Spectre. They wound up passing on her contribution in favor of Sam Smith’s ‘Writing on the Wall’ (big mistake, IMO). Today’s SOTD is assumed to be the track she wrote for the film (Spectre is the 24th Bond movie, and the musical and lyrical content are certainly in the ballpark). It would’ve worked like gangbusters.
Over the past 5-10 years, television has increasingly taken over as the dominant filmed art form in terms of quality. There have certainly been many great theatrical films over that span, and it’s still tough to beat the experience of the big screen, but television’s ability to tell complex tales across multiple seasons and to evolve characters over many years is unique.
I don’t know when the switch came from episodic television that was truly episodic (with each hour or half-hour essentially self-contained) to the complicated mythologies that are so common today. Perhaps it was Twin Peaks or The X-Files, or something earlier that I’ve never seen.
Meet Me In Montauk 