These came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got ’em. Here’s what I said about them back then (with some minor editing):
The twangy noir-surf guitar. The skulking melody line. The swaggering Vegas horns. Is there any cooler movie music than the James Bond Theme? No, there is not — though sometimes, the individual films’ title songs (like Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger and Paul McCartney’s) come close.
The must-have set The Best Of Bond collects those titular tunes from 18 official flicks (sorry, fans of Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again). Some numbers, like the pair above, are unforgettable. Others, like a-ha’s The Living Daylights and Louis Armstrong’s We Have All The Time In The World (from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) are unremarkable. But this is still the perfect gift for the Bond fan in your house. All that’s missing is the new Garbage track for The World Is Not Enough. Which, surprisingly, is one of the low points of the official soundtrack CD released simultaneously. Don’t blame Shirley Manson and co.; they didn’t write this shmaltzy ballad. Still, you’re better off skipping to later tracks, which drag James into the new musical millennium by adding vibrating trip-hop synths and funky scratching to the sweet violins and orchestral manoeuvres. Garbage may not deliver, but the rest of this disc is more than enough.
