While there are two dozen Bond theme tunes, their quality varies pretty wildly, from the truly awful (sorry, Madonna), to the deeply dull (Sam Smith), to the true classics, like Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger.” Here are all the James Bond themes, ranked from the stinkers to the gems. (You'd never hear a smooth Sean Connery-era theme in a Daniel Craig Bond movie, after all.) For any musician, recording a Bond tune guarantees a spot in music history, but history doesn't remember all of the Bond themes fondly.
Bond themes are the secret sauce of the movies: paired with the bombastic credits, they set the tone for the action to come, and speak to the current era of the franchise. We can expect the opening scenes of the film to deliver on a few time-honored traditions: the gun barrel sequence, the pre-title teaser, and perhaps most importantly of all, the highly stylized title credits, set to an original theme song. The spoofy 1967 spy thriller is not considered as part of the James Bond canon by the fans of the series, but Bacharach’s score includes his famous The Look of Love. No matter how directors or actors put their signature stamp on the franchise, James Bond films have a familiar formula.
