Listen To Radiohead’s Rejected James Bond Song
What? Radiohead released a new song and almost nobody is talking about it?
On Christmas day, they discreetly wrote this on their Facebook page with the link of the song on their soundcloud:
‘Last year we were asked to write a theme tune for the Bond movie Spectre.
Yes we were. It didn’t work out, but became something of our own, which we love very much.
As the year closes we thought you might like to hear it.
Merry Christmas. May the force be with you.’
It is a very Radiohead-ish song, keys-driven with a lush and wide-screen string orchestration and this famous angelic falsetto, sprawling like darkness. But this is a very sad song, may be too melancholic for a Bond movie? I can’t explain the rejection of the movie makers because I like it, actually these strings mid song are very Beck-Campbell-Sea-Change, so I felt right at home, in this same gloomy tortured home…
Now think about it, Radiohead in a James Bond movie? It didn’t fit right away, no wonder they picked Sam Smith’s more pompous ‘Writing’s on the Wall’ instead, it is far more conventional, and predictable as hell, with, yes, another falsetto over a lavish orchestration which seems just a bit too feminine for the macho franchise? If they wanted a high-pitched voice singing the theme song, why not hiring Lana del Rey next time? She has always wanted to be Nancy Sinatra.
