James Bond movies do not thrill me. I like them as silent black and white backdrop in a late night whisky bar, but I have only consciously sat down and watched them two times in my life. I will fully admit that this is my loss. Like it is my loss that I rarely get to hear the music themes from James Bond movies. The ones that are so dramatic and yet so vapid, the ones that are played over the final credits. Like Adele's take from a few years back, for instance, that was not so much 'bad' as hopelessly 'not great'.
This year's Bond theme caught my attention. And how could it not when it is Billie Eilish herself who was commissioned to write one? Billie Eilish, the latest pop phenomenon adored by people as random as teenagers 'with edge' and critics 'with taste'. All of whom are, of course, deeply in love with the new Bond theme.
Which - how should we go about it? - is not very good. A Billie Eilish song I dislike is of course hardly newsworthy (her album is made up of songs just like that), but I thought I would mention it as a recent lowlight due to the fact that this new Bond theme gets right at the heart of what I cannot stand about Billie and the like: it is so horribly, so inescapably contrived.
'Contrived' is not just a word. It is, I believe, the word. It perfectly captures Billie Eilish's vocal style as well as the mood of the times (bring back Adele!). She does not pull it off - whatever this 'it' may be. She just sounds awfully insincere. Flat, too, despite all the bells and whistles that go with her vocals. I mean, I do not care about this whole Agent 007 thing, but even I will not stomach it when someone sells me James Bond so fucking cheap.
