James Bond & Friends

How will the music choices – and late changes – affect No Time To Die? This week we recap all of the music news hurriedly released after the press got wind of both composer Hans Zimmer and title-song artist Billie Eilish at work on No Time To Die. We talk about the integration of the title song with the score, plus the lacklustre attempts to do so on SPECTRE and Skyfall; the young age of Shirley Bassey, Sam Smith, Adele, Sheena Easton, and Nancy Sinatra at the time of their Bond themes; the perspective a young title-artist will bring to the Bond sound; directors’ choices of composer and artistic impact of key personnel; why Dan Romer was dropped; who proposed a Young Bond prequel television series and why it got nixed; and the possible three-hour running time. Along the way we stumble on listening to Wings without earmuffs, when good artists experiment and fail, flogging DB5 replicas to keep Aston Martin afloat, the missing melodies, Michael Wilson's naps, cross-dressing Felix, recycled scripts and set-pieces