The Spy That Ghosted Me: On Lana Del Rey's Rejected Bond Theme

Fives on Friday 6/7/2024

Happy Friday!

A few weeks back at the Ivor Novello Awards, a British event for songwriters that I had been ambivalently ignorant of until this year, American singer/songwriter Lana Del Rey delivered a soundbite to the assembled press that confirmed something I’d long suspected in silence. Asked by BBC whether she’d ever consider writing a song for the provincial James Bond film franchise, Lana Del Rey revealed that she’d already tried once before with the song “24” from her 2015 album Honeymoon, which she wrote for the then upcoming Spectre. I imagine that most people reading this soundbite will shrug their shoulders and carry on with their day, but when I saw it I went full Boris.

I called this back in 2015!! I *knew* “24” was a Bond song! I know a Bond song when I hear one, and fresh off watching every James Bond movie in chronological order my ear in my early 20s, my ear was especially sensitive when Honeymoon dropped. It always feels good to be right even briefly, even about something that doesn’t matter. But it felt especially good to be right about something as trivial as Bond songs, a tradition I’ve been obsessed with since the first time a grade school classmate booted up Goldeneye on his Nintendo 64. This might surprise some readers given my political leanings and professed taste in media (I mean, just last week I was comparing Pynchon and Marquez!) but I have a soft spot for James Bond movies, even when they kinda suck.

This fondness comes as much from intellectual curiosity as it does lizard-brain hedonism. I find Bond’s consistency over six decades and 25 movies fascinating, in no small part because it is easy to see how the world changes around Bond by contrast. Bond as a character and as a life style brand is a man frozen in time. You always know what you’re going to get, that’s why “bond” works so well as a prefix. Bond villains, Bond girls, Bond themes. They’re all recognizably “a type”. This consistency makes it easy to spot the way the franchise has adapted to survive into the 21st century. You can trace the changes in blockbuster trends entirely through the lens of Bond. You’ll see Star Wars and 70s Sci-Fi in Moonraker, blackspoiltation in Live Or Let Die, the rise of Michael Mann and 1980s hyper-violence in License to Kill, and so. In the 21st century itself Bond adopted Bourne chaos-cam, Nolan-scale solemnity, and a single continuous narrative in order to keep up with his garishly dressed competitors over at Marvel and DC. That these changes are not always successful only makes them more useful to the amateur historian of pop culture.

Bond songs have also changed with the times, usually taking on the production trends of the moment for better (Garbage) or worse (Duran Duran). However, I’d argue that barring a few notable exceptions from the tonally confused Roger Moore era, Bond songs have changed less perceptibly than the movies they’ve accompanied. There’s gonna be strings, there’s gonna be horns, you’re going to hear that iconic 5th→tritone→minor 6th→tritone motion at least once and a whole lot of minor melodies besides. This is why I was able to spot “24” as a Bond theme so quickly. It does everything you’d expect a Bond song to do. If you couldn’t tell that Lana Del Rey was gunning for the job with the languid intro and classy minor chord progression, the roaring brass hits at the end of the song leave no doubt.

Not only does “24” nail all the hallmarks of a Bond song, Lana Del Rey is the perfect person to sing it. Over the course of the series, Bond songs have not discriminated as to the gender of their singer. As you can you can ham it up to high heaven or croon seductively, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a man, woman, or, in the case of Spectre’s Sam Smith, non-binary. That said, I think women have typically dominated the field, for two reasons. First, Bond songs work better when you can imagine James Bond listening to them. I just can’t picture James Bond ever putting on a Soundgarden album, sorry. Wearing fantastic gowns and singing about him is about all I imagine Bond thinks women should be up to when they aren’t having sex with him, so it isn’t hard to picture his record collection featuring more Nancy Sinatra than Ol’ Blue Eyes.

Second, having a woman set a Bond movie’s themes to music dilutes the straight-gin-harshness of the franchise’s masculinity. The Bond singer hovers just above the events of the film. She’s not quite a Greek chorus, but she operates with a little more irony than Bond himself, who usually spends the duration of the song tumbling through a lava lamp. In some cases, think “Nobody Does It Better” and “For Your Eyes Only” Bond songs can almost stand-in for the otherwise absent interiority of the Bond girl, saying more in music than can usually be contained in the words “oh, James!”. This is exactly why Lana Del Rey would have been such a good fit. Not only has she repeatedly placed herself in the linage of “You Only Live Twice” singer Nancy Sinatra, she’s also spent her career articulating the perspective of women who find themselves in the orbit of difficult and emotionally stunted men. Who better to lament at the cost of loving James Bond, to speak for the Bond girl caught in some pernicious European billionaire’s clutches?

Why then did “24” not make the cut? I wonder whether Lana Del Rey was *too* perfect for the job. I don’t just mean in the sense that she was too eager for the role, too openly infatuated with the 60s milieu that Bond emerged from. Sky Ferreira practically sang her way into the cast of Twin Peaks so there’s no harm about being upfront with your ambitions. What I mean is that Lana is too smart of a commentator on men like Bond. She’s capable of cutting these kind of macho guys down to size in a single breath, putting her in front of, let’s be real, one of the weaker modern Bond movies risks making Bond look like too much of a chump. Even when she sounds head over heels with a guy it sounds like she’s already over him. Her work is too motivated by irony, too liable to make guys uncomfortable. Lana songs take place between cigarette drags in the backrooms of the male gaze. Bond fans do not want to suffer a moment of wondering whether they are being owned.

Taking this logic one step further, maybe “24” understood the assignment too well, especially in the wake of Skyfall. Adele’s Grammy & Oscar winning theme isn’t my favorite Bond song, but it is maybe the most “Bond song” a Bond song has ever been. Following it up with another song calibrated perfectly for the layman’s idea of of a Bond theme might have risked diminishing returns. From that perspective Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On The Wall”, a song that despite it’s orchestral grandeur could just as easily be an unrelated Sam Smith single, is a less obvious and therefore more “daring” pick. Of course, if they really wanted to move in a new bold direction they could have went with Radiohead’s rejected theme. Instead, they went with a half-measure and the worst of the three known options.

Crucially Lana Del Rey is the only American artist in that last paragraph. While there have been plenty of non-British Bond singers, I don’t think it’s out of realm of the possibility that Lana Del Rey was too American for Spectre. In the context of Bond’s cosmopolitan jet set, I wonder whether Lana’s devotion to gas station Americana might come across as a little “low class”. After all, she put her lot in with the PBR drinkers, not the Heineken crowd. British R&B mewling goes over better with the Bond core audience than wry LA condescension. Ultimately though I suspect that Lana simply wasn’t a big enough name at the time. Smith and “No Time To Die” singer Billie Eilish suggest that they’re looking for big name chart toppers, whereas Lana Del Rey’s career operates at the slow burning pace of album cylces. Would I still like to hear an official Lana Del Rey Bond theme now that her Q rating (lol) is high enough? I mean, I guess? I don’t need the Broccoli family to validate my taste in music. I bet she’d do a great job given a second crack at it, and I think it’s cool that she still clearly wants to do it. Were I in her position I would certainly feel several types of ways about Billie Eilesh getting a certified Bond song before I did. But the legacy of near misses is just as prestigious, and how much more appropriate that Bond is the man that got away.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

• I’m running short on time this week, so I’ll just say that if you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, I’d really appreciate it if you either recommended it to someone else that you think would dig it or became a paying subscriber. Only $5 a month gets you access to the full Drumming Upstream archives, as well as other bonuses like early access to my new music, extra playlists of cool tunes every month, and more!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a playlist with all of this year’s tracks here, new tunes added every Monday-Friday.

“Ganeni” by Elyanna (WOLEDTO, 2024)

I can understand after living through the 2010s if music fans are exhausted by identity-oriented marketing. However some people, musicians included, have very interesting identities. Take the Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna. What I love about this track, besides the fact that it gets my hips wiggling even when I’m sitting down, is that it’s impossible to disentangle the Latin and Middle Eastern influences in the music. From the “long-long-short” rhythm to the horn arrangement, the song effortlessly exists in both worlds, calling into question whether there are even different musical “worlds” to begin with.

“Calle Luna Calle Sol” by Willie Colón (Lo Mato, 1973)

It is still Salsa Spring until further notice. By complete coincidence, friend of the blog Julia Gaeta posted on Instagram that this was her favorite salsa record a few weeks back so I immediately added it to the queue. While this tune doesn’t have the “sprawling fusion odyssey” element that’s hooked me on other salsa records, it’s no less insistent and dense with musical info.

“Let My Yes Be Yes” by Ibibio Sound Machine (Pull the Rope, 2024)

Synth-funk led by a mesmerizing dance between a squelchy bass and cracking drums. Kinda reminds of latter period Nine Inch Nails in its minimalism, but this song is obviously working in a way chiller register.

“Oh France” by Mdou Moctar (Funeral for Justice, 2024)

It’s a given that any Mdou Moctar track is going to feature out of control guitar work, but this track caught my ear with its rhythm. The first half rides a complex 6/8 polyrhythm, another Moctar staple. Then in the second half the band drops into a slower “long-long-short” rhythm (not far off from the beat to the Elyanna song above!), that steadily rises back up to the original tempo. Thrilling stuff!

“Tanto Como Ayer” by Hector Lavoe (De Ti Depende, 1976)

I bet Shiro Sagisu is a salsa guy. Something about that unreal 1970s reverb that makes string sections sound so haunting. I love how many different ways the orchestra colors the song without overriding the central melody. By the end there’s a palpable sense of tragedy in the arrangement that really does it for me. Not too far off from the luxurious tragedy that the best Bond songs evoke, to be honest!

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

Here are five micro reviews from my high school and college CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.

The Faithless by Nights Like These (2006) - Metalcore

I think this band got some minor Myspace hype, which inspired a friend of mine to buy this album and then lend it to me. I’ve never heard about them since. Basically this band got caught between eras in metalcore. On one side is the Swedish inspired stuff that I’ve talked about a lot in these micro reviews and on the other is the deathcore sound that took off in the late 00s. This band waffles between the two and suffer for their bad timing.

Nevermind by Nirvana (1991) - Rock

Pretty sure this was my sister’s originally. While I was never a Nirvana obsessive I had a month long fling with this record in middle school. Side one has all of the hits. Those are all good fun and evidence of this band’s incredible pop ear, but these days I think I like the second half more? Great pop rock played with punk recklessness. Deservedly loved as a rock classic.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses by A Storm of Light (2009) - Post-Metal

Picked this up because of the connection to Neurosis/Battle of Mice, and because “Tempest” is a great tune. A more melodic take on the post metal sound, more recognizable vocal melodies, etc. A concept album about environmental anxiety. Fun! “Tempest” still kicks ass, but a lot of the other tunes feel like they are lesser copies of that song. Still, this has a consistent tone and mood that I enjoy even if the individual tracks are not all hits. Slow, sad, mournful, and loud.

Geneva by Russian Circles (2009) - Post-Metal

I used to see this band live in Chicago at least twice a year. They figured out how to turn post rock/post metal into groovy mosh music. No small feat. This record is on the chiller side. More strings and horns etc. It’s good, but a bit one-ear-out-the-other. Lots of grey, sonically. In general this band’s recorded material doesn’t capture how much fun they are in person. Great drumming, though.

Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? by Megadeth (1986) - Thrash Metal

“What do you mean you’re kicking me out of Metallica? I wrote all the good riffs didn’t I?” At this point Megadeth were propelled more by bitterness and raw skill than songwriting, but it turns out that in heavy metal spite can get you pretty far. Not my favorite of their albums but every song has at least one great moment. Ok maybe not the Jeff Beck cover. I don’t know what’s going on with that one.