The finished song, “Never Say Never Again,” regularly tops lists of most hated Bond theme songs. Dare we say ’70s porno soundtrack’? Whatever – in terms of style, it’s a lounge track at a slow pace that doesn’t make one think of James Bond films. Interestingly, it’s not a million miles away from the style and tempo of “All Time High,” the theme tune of that year’s official James Bond. That track is a fair bit better, and besides, John Barry is able to save it.

“Never Say Never Again” is generally regarded as one of the worst James Bond films. If they’d been able to use the original composition, at least it would have a decent song attached to it.

Honorable Mentions

1987’s “The Living Daylights” was John Barry’s final James Bond score and followed the successful Duran Duran title track of A View To A Kill with another similarly energetic pop song, this time “The Living Daylights” by a-ha. Word has it that John Barry and the members of that band didn’t get on, and that’s probably why the song had only a minimal impact on the score. Unusually for a Bond film, a total of three original songs were written.

Barry had a much better working relationship with the members of The Pretenders, and the love ballad, “If There Was A Man” and the rock song Where Has Everybody Gone feature the music of Barry mixed with the lyrics and vocal performance of Chrisie Hynde. The latter features in source form within the movie, blaring out of a Walkman, the former plays over the end titles, and both crop up, instrumentally, in some of the romantic and action cues in the film score. We didn’t put these into the main list as they were never intended to be title tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OLocm8AVMM

Apparently, the Pet Shop Boys song “This Must Be The Place I’ve Waited Years To Leave” was originally conceived to be a James Bond title track, but the finished song was then heavily reworked and doesn’t sound particularly Bondian. The Beach Boys instrumental “Pet Sounds” from the 1966 album of the same name was originally intended to be a Bond theme, and it was at one time called “Run James Run,” but the idea was abandoned. It’s an usual sounding track, but it does have some twangy guitar.