Here's Sam Smith's Bond song and guess what? It's a ballad

Bond songs are at their best when they're utterly preposterous. Whether it's Paul McCartney sticking a firework up the bottom of a symphony orchestra, or Madonna intoning, "Sigmund Freud: Analyse this," the tracks that suit the franchise best are the ones that match it for popcorn bombast.

Which is why Daniel Craig's po-faced Bond hasn't really had a classic theme. Even Adele's Skyfall, the best-selling Bond song to date, is a bit flat.

So, what are we to make of Sam Smith's entry into the canon, Writing's On The Wall? It makes all the right moves - a tumescent orchestra, a soaring vocal, and lyrics that delve into the super-spy's psyche: "I've spent a lifetime running, but always get away."

But it's also a little dreary. I can't begin to imagine what the nudie silhouette ladies are going to do during the title sequence. Have a nap? Scroll through Twitter? It's certainly not a song you could have a deep throaty snog to, even if you were as suave as James Bond.

Nonetheless, I suspect this will be the first Bond theme to reach number one (it's already at the top of iTunes). The publicity campaign has been flawlessly executed, and Mr Smith is an artist at the top of his game. Plus, it seems like it's going to be a grower.

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New from Lorde: Yellow Flicker Beat

The world's busiest teenager - aka Lorde - has been spending the downtime on her world tour curating the soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One (what a mouthful).

"Every night, after I play, and say hi, and take pictures, and I walk up the stairs and we go on our way, I set up in this little bed office. I work from midnight until late on the soundtrack, singing into my computer, listening to demos and final mixes. My bus sleeps," she writes on her website.

The film's out in December which, in this world of hyperbole and titillation, means the build-up started aeons ago. But we had to wait until today to hear Lorde's first musical contribution.

Lyrically, Yellow Flicker Flame is a departure from the New Zealander's usual subject matter of small town ennui, plunging straight into The Hunger Games' fantasy world. Playing the film book's reluctant heroine, Katniss Everdeen, she sings about the dilemmas facing a teenage revolutionary. "They used to shout my name, now they whisper it," she whispers, before putting her battle face on: "I made a little prison, and I’m locking up everyone that ever laid a finger on me." Yeouch.

Listen below... And if you're not convinced by the drone of the opening bars, stick around for a killer chorus.

Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat

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Charli XCX reveals new soundtrack song

Fault In Our Stars is one of the best books I read last year. The story of a young teenager with terminal cancer who's forced to attend a support group, it's acerbic and funny and philosophical all at once.

Written by US author John Green, I devoured it during a spell on jury duty, even writing down several quotes which, looking at them now, out of context, seem a little overcooked. This one is my favourite, though.

"The voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again."

The book is being turned into a film starring Shailene Woodley and Willem Dafoe, which is due later this summer. Director Josh Boone has a knack for cool soundtracks - 2012's Stuck in Love featured The National, Bon Iver Conor Oberst - and it seems Fault In Our Stars will follow suit. The trailer featured Sleeping At Last and OneRepublic, and now Charli XCX has unveiled her contribution, Boom Clap.

Sparky and shouty with an undercurrent of melancholy, it's a perfect fit for the story's central relationship. "You're the glitter and the darkness in my world," sings Charli.

Listen below.

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Lana Del Rey: Young And Beautiful

As a lifelong member of the lucky bugger club, I'm off to Cannes next week to meet the cast of Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby. For "research", I've been listening to the star-studded soundtrack on repeat this week. A few tracks stand out: Jay-Z's 100$ Bill, which is packed full of dialogue from the film, makes explicit the link between Gatsby's self-made West Egg excess and 2013's hip-hop culture; while Bryan Ferry's lush, orchestral reworking of Love Is The Drug is an unexpected high point.

On the other hand, Beyonce and Andre 3000 should be imprisoned for what they've done to Amy Winehouse's Back To Black. And everyone else seems to have been given the brief: "Make something like We Speak No Americano, only worse".

In the end, the only real keeper is Lana Del Rey's Young And Beautiful. Darker than treacle, and twice as sticky, it's enchanting and langurous, and a perfect fit for the story's tangle of stolen moments and doomed romance.

You can tell Baz Luhrmann agrees by the way it's plastered all over the trailer. What's more, the song's motif is scattered through the film, with jazz and orchestral versions embellishing the score. Now there's a video, too. Directed by Chris Sweeney and shot by Sophie Muller, it's simple but effective. I'm not sure the film will be the same.

Lana Del Rey - Young And Beautiful

PS: A clutch of great articles were posted on the Gatsby film today. Start with The Guardian, which looks at F Scott Fitzgerald's attitude to his most famous novel; then head over to the New York Times, which looks at how Baz Luhrmann has (or has not) picked up on those themes; and finish up with Rolling Stone, which brands the film "artificial and boring". Ouch.

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One Direction's art-house movie trailer

When I saw One Direction at the Brits, they were being followed around by Super Size-Me director Morgan Spurlock, and one of those huge ring lights they use to make pop stars eyes go all sparkly. As we all know, that was in aid of One Direction 3D a hybrid concert / documentary that's due out in August.

But did you know that, at the very same time, the band were filming a foreign language art-house movie, loosely based on Lord Of The Flies? The trailer was released this week. It's strange, eerie and unsettling - and I know one thing for certain: Claudia Winkleman is going to be very, very confused.

One Direction - Film trailer

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Kylie's new single is the best thing she's done in ages

There's an argument that Kylie's at her best when she's not being glitter cannoned pop gargantosaur KYLIE MINOGUE. Her most interesting songs are side projects (Where The Wild Roses Grow), cast-offs (Cherry Bomb) and remixes (the 10-minute reswizzle of Confide In Me).

So it's no surprise that Whistle, her movie soundtrack collaboration with experimental Icelandic band Múm, is better than anything on her last three studio albums. Kylie's hushed vocals are spookily desolate, as strings and beats fade in and out of focus behind her.

I can't hear the lyrics clearly enough to work out what's going on, but the song was written specifically for the film Jack And Diane, which has the most bonkers IMDB synopsis since Shark vs Octopus: "Jack and Diane, two teenage girls, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane's charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack's tough skinned heart. But, when Jack discovers that Diane is leaving the country in a week she tries to push her away. Diane must struggle to keep their love alive while hiding the secret that her newly awakened sexual desire is giving her werewolf-like visions."

Twilight has a lot to answer for, doesn't it?



Kylie also pops up in the film trailer, alongside recent Bafta rising star winner Juno Temple. It looks awful. As one YouTube comment puts it: "Like a cross between alien meets predator in a vagina."

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RZA Kicks

Here's a track from the new Quentin Tarantino-produced, RZA-directed movie "The Man With The Iron Fists".

Inspired by the Chop Socky martial arts flicks of the 1970s, the film features Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu and Pam Grier in a blood-drenched Chinese morality tale that has something to do with gold coins and a man who can turn his body into a sheet of metal (like Batfink). It is, by all accounts, as unhinged as it sounds.

But if you sit through to the closing credits, you get to hear RZA team up with The Black Keys for a song called The Baddest Man Alive. Riding a grubby B-movie groove, Dan Auerbach and the Wu-Tang Man drawl a couple of bleary verses about, well, being the baddest man alive ("I'll grab a crocodile by his hair," they suggest, implausibly).

Maybe it's not the genre-defying tour de force you'd hope for, but it's worth watching the video just to see RZA slap his collaborators with a big wet fish.

The Black Keys & RZA - The Baddest Man Alive

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Spike Lee's Michael Jackson documentary - watch a clip

What's the biggest number you can think of? Now add 10 to it, and square the result. Then add 24 zeroes. Finally, take the number and multiply it by the number of times Michael Jackson went "Hee hee" on a song between 1982 and 2001.

By now you should have broken your calculator. Well, that's how many spurious, exploitative items of Jacko memorabilia have been produced daily* since his untimely death three years ago.

But here's a new project I'll definitely make some time for: A Spike Lee documentary on the making of Bad - aka the follow-up to the biggest selling album of all time (except it's not really).

According to the blurb, it "features over 40 interviews conducted personally by Spike Lee with Michael's confidants, choreographers, musicians and other collaborators". Also featured are Sheryl Crow (who sang backing vocals on the Bad tour) and fans including Kanye West and Mariah Carey.

Here's a brief preview clip of the section covering the filming of The Way You Make Me Feel. It's a hairs on the back of your neck moment.

The documentary will accompany a 25th anniversary Box Set of Bad, which also includes a previously-unreleased DVD of Jackson's concert at Wembley Stadium on July 16th, 1988.

* NB: "educated" guess

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Things to do this weekend: Re-watch (500) Days Of Summer

That new Mark Ronson track (see below) put me in such a good mood, I went straight back to YouTube to watch this: The dance sequence from self-consciously kooky but otherwise excellent indie movie (500) Days Of Summer. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face - and not just because the soundtrack is Hall & Oates.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt - You Make My Dreams Come True

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Dubstep + Funk = Funkstep

Damn! That's funky.

It's called Superbad and it's the new single from dubstep person Flux Pavillion (proper middle class name: Joshua Steele). Borrowing heavily from Isaac Hayes-era funk, this could be the theme tune for a 20th century private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks, but treats them with respect because society has moved away from the misogynistic objectification of women. Can you dig it?

I love to hear proper drums on a dub-step track - and the combination of old-skool breaks with throbbing synth riffs shows how much of an influence The Prodigy have been on the current crop of dubstep producers. The song's title is, I assume, a portmanteau from the Blaxpolitation films Superfly and Baadassss! Personally, I think Ass-Fly would have been more memorable but that is why they do not let me make these sorts of decisions.

Doctor P & Flux Pavilion - Superbad


Superbad has been floating around the Radio 1 playlist for a couple of weeks now and is, I believe, available to buy from today. The single version doesn't fade out abruptly at the 2'00" mark, either.

Incidentally, the song made me want to dig out Michael Jai White's hilarious 2009 spoof Black Dynamite, which lampoons all the ridiculous dialogue, shonky stunt work and continuity errors of the mid-70s Blaxploitation films. Jai stars as Dyno-mite ("he's super cool and he knows kung fu"), the greatest African-American action star of the 1970s. When The Man kills his only brother and starts pumping heroin into local orphanages, it's up to him to find justice...

My favourite scene features an actor who can't differentiate between dialogue and stage directions.



The theme music from the film, recorded on vintage equipment by Adrian Younge, is a brilliantly faithful recreation of that '74 Soul Power sound. Take a listen...



So, er... There you go. I'm not quite sure how we got from the beginning of this post to where we are now but it was fun, no? ("no" - just about everyone).

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Beastie Boys: The Sitcom

Fight For Your Right: Revisited is a cameo-filled, knockabout farce courtesy of The Beastie Boys. The concept, such as it is, is that the 1986-era Beastie Boys (Volkswagen pendants, snarling lips, inflatable phalluses) tangle with future versions of themselves (socially conscious Tibetan freedom fighters who occasionally remember to make awesome rap records).

It's been called a short film. It's been called a megavideo. I reckon it's a brilliant pilot for a sitcom. Suggested titles for this Beastie Boys comedy include:

• Hello, Nasty!!!
• Third Ad Rock From The Sun.
• Ill & Grace.
• Fight For Your Right To Partridge Family.
• Actually, this idea's rubbish. Let's move on.

Fight For Your Right: Revisited premiered last night in Greenwich, New York. It was posted online shortly afterwards... And here it is.

Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right: Revisited


Did you spot all the cameos? The cast-list includes... Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Danny McBride, John C. Reilly, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Rainn Wilson, Rashida Jones, Orlando Bloom, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, Kirsten Dunst, Maya Rudolph, Laura Dern, Amy Poehler, Shannyn Sossamon, Alicia Silverstone, David Cross. And The list goes on.

You can also check out a full stream of the Beastie Boys' new album Hot Sauce Committee Pt 2 on the end of this link.

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The Beatles and Social Networking

In case you've missed or ignored all the five-star reviews and impressive box-office figures, The Social Network is a very, very good film. Half parable, half character study, the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shows how big ideas tend create an equally big trail of destruction for those involved. No matter how trivial Facebook may turn out to be, there is an echo in its creation of the great intellectual disputes of the 20th Century - Marconi vs Logie Baird, or Rosalind Franklin's often-overlooked contribution to Crick and Watson's discovery of the DNA sequence.

If this all sounds a bit dry, bear in mind that the script comes from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin - a man with a gift for breathing drama into the dry legalese of backroom deals. The central performances from Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Armie Harmer (who plays as both Cameron Winklevoss and his twin brother Tyler) are exceptional, too, dashing off the intricate dialogue as if they were in The Inbetweeners, not a drama about coding a website.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a blog about music and, aside from the fact that this movie has kept Justin Timberlake out of the studio for another six months (booo), there's a lot of great soundtrack action in The Social Network.

Amongst the highlights is a disturbingly dark moog version of In The Hall Of The Mountain King by Trent Reznor. The Nine Inch Nails frontman also compiled the film's licensed music, and pulled off the coup of securing a Beatles track for the closing credits. I have to admit it's one I wasn't familiar with - Baby, You're A Rich Man. A snippet was featured in the Yellow Submarine film back in 1968, but it's more familiar to Beatlemaniacs as the B-side to All You Need Is Love. If The Fab Four were on iTunes, this would have charted after the film was released.

The Beatles - Baby, You're A Rich Man

Sadly, there's no soundtrack album for The Social Network (although there is a CD of Reznor's score available). Luckily, though, movie music blog Reel Sound has compiled a definitive list of the songs in the film, so you can handcraft your own playlists.

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Scott Pilgrim bonus material

Comic book film Scott Pilgrim vs The World came out in the UK yesterday. Starring Michael "Arrested Development" Cera, it's a high-calorie energy blast of eye popping action movie mayhem - but with a soft, tender underbelly.

If you grew up in the 80s and owned a Sega Mega Drive, this film is for you. If you didn't, it's still worth checking out.

Over at the BBC, I've put together an intricate, 11-panel comic strip showing how the graphic novel was lovingly and faithfully translated to the big screen. Please click on this link to justify my existence.



And, for those of you who are interested, I've posted the full transcript of my interviews with director Edgar Wright and stars Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman "after the jump".

Read more »

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Scott Pilgrim vs The World

I am very excited about this movie, and it is all because of 12 frames in the official trailer.



1) A girl is playing the drums.
2) The drums say "drum" on them.
3) Her playing synchronises perfectly with the soundtrack.
4) The soundtrack is The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die.
5) When she hits the hi-hat, animated stars burst onto the screen.

Even if the rest of the film is a disaster zone (and it won't be), I'm turning up just to see this scene.

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Megapost: The last two weeks in a nutshell

Honestly, I turn my back for two seconds and Scouting For Girls go to number one. You lot just can't be trusted by yourselves. Tsk tsk.

Ah well, here's some other musinews and "interesting" links from the last two weeks of blissful inactivity.

:: Thank God for Kelis. Her new single (which actually premiered last November) is a Giorgio Moroder-inspired stone cold classic. It's called a capella, and the video is a triumph. Full marks all round.

Kelis - A Capella


:: Christina Aguilera's new single is called Not Myself Tonight. It's weaker than your nan's tea. (Brightcove)

:: Direct from the 1998 newsroom, reports filter through that Ricky Martin is totally gay for men. (BBC)

:: A novelist reveals the secrets of 24's writing room. Surprisingly, it's not just 12 blokes going "and then Jack punches a guy in the face WITH A HAMMER and everything explodes". But it's close. (New York Times)

:: The Noisettes have done a literally quite good cover version of The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've) for a Doc Marten anniversary campaign. For some reason, the word "slinky" comes to mind here.

Noisettes - Ever Fallen In Love


:: An insightful, balanced, non-hysterical profile of Lady Gaga of Hitsville. A rare and beautiful thing. (New York Magazine)

:: Another new A-Team trailer was unleashed, featuring gold standard dialogue such as: "I'm B.A. You're going to B.Unconcious" Really? Really?! (Apple)

:: Grammy-nominated R&B artist Janelle Monae has been hovering around on the edges of massive success for a couple of years now. I'd always avoided listening to her because I mistakenly believed she was palefaced West Wing star Janel Maloney (Donna) attempting a godawful music career. Turns out she isn't anything of the sort and her first "proper" single, Tightrope, is good for your ears.

Janelle Monae - Tightrope


:: My interviews with pop warbler Diana Vickers and sensitive troubador Joshua Radin went up on the BBC site while I was away. One was read by 50,000 people, the other by 2,300. Can you guess which was which?

:: Keane have done a song with the teriffic Somalian rap'n'b star K'Naan. The two acts have nothing in common except alphabetical proximity, and the song is… well, put it this way, neither of them looks comfortable in the video. (YouTube)

:: People are still remixing Marina And The Diamonds' I Am Not A Robot and the remixes continue to be brilliant. Expect to hear a lot more, too, because the single's being re-released, properly this time, on 26th April. (Arjan Writes)

:: Mini Viva continued their slow transformation into Mel and Kim (When they were both alive, obviously. Don't be sick.)

Mini Viva - Candy


:: The difference between real 3D (ie Avatar) and cheap 3D (ie everything else) is not being made apparent to cinemagoers forking out £5 extra for their ticket. (The Hollywood Reporter)

:: Popjustice alerts us to the existence of a mysterious new pop duo called Royal Palms, who proclaim "Yacht Rock is back". They have potential. (Popjustice

:: The perils of adapting non-fiction books for the movies (The Washington Post)

:: Break out the keytars! It's only bloody Goldfrapp doing their "massive hit single" Rocket on the telly.

Goldfrapp - Rocket

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Up and away!

I'm a huge animation fan, so I was over the moon when Up got an Oscar nomination for best film on Tuesday. Even better, it's also in the running for best animated feature, so the talented geeks of Pixar are practically guaranteed a statuette (unless the dual nomination splits the vote...)

Anyway, this gives me a timely excuse to post some of the film's amazing production art, which was first showcased on animator Lou Romano's blog last year. The images illustrate just how much care and attention is paid to the tiniest of tiny details on Pixar's films. The animators test everything from the the shape of cloud formations, to the exact complexion of their protagonist. Here's a selection:









If you like these, there are tons more on this page, along with some stunning Youtube clips of the animation tests.

Best of all, the DVD is out in 10 days - and it's a steal at £9.99

*ALL ARTWORK PROPERTY of PIXAR/DISNEY*

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Toy Story 3 trailer

It's not out til June 2010 - but I can't wait!!

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A mixed bag of internet goodies

It's like a 10p mix for your PC.

:: Jordin Sparks' new single is officially "a bit of a belter". It's from the pen of Ryan Tedder, him of Bleeding Love and Halo (halo, halo, halo, HALO) fame. In an unlikely tribute to Pat Benatar, it has been called Battlefield. The MP3 is over here.

:: Terrible online waste of time pt 1: Play Scrabble against yourself, against the clock. The very definition of "okay, maybe just one more turn"... Go to Deepleap.org.

:: Overlooked synth-pop genii Dragonette have put a free MP3 of their new single on Myspace. The chorus is astounding, the rest is a bit of a mess.

:: There is a certain degree of pant-wetting about the new Sophie Ellis Bextor / Freemasons single from the sort of people who like Sophie Ellis Bextor and the Freemasons. I'm guessing a low top 10 chart placing when it comes out on 15th June.



:: Watch Little Boots play Stuck On Repeat for an embarassing uncle who's desperate to prove he's trendy, and his wife, who believes she is "in touch" with "the kids" because she's heard of Tetris. Cringeworthy.

:: Terrible online waste of time pt 2: Broken Picture Telephone. It's like Chinese whispers, on the internet, with pictures. In this game, for example, the phrase "Everyone gets punched in the face at the same time" became "an upset robot trapped on the train tracks breaks free", via a circuitous route involving the following picture:




:: Cat plays peek-a-boo.




:: Robert Downey Jr is back in his big red romper suit on the set of Iron Man 2...

:: Are these the Top 10 hidden album tracks of all time?? (Personally, I'd have put Janet Jackson's Strong Enough from The Velvet Rope in there, but what does my opinion count for??)

:: Have a quick peek at Where It's At - an online map that shows you famous locations from pop culture, from the real Hotel California to the parking lot that inspired Big Yellow Taxi. Needs a bit of work to add locations outside the US (Abbey Road isn't even on there!).

:: Rejoice! Flight Of The Conchords is back for its second series - starting on BBC Four tonight at 10:30pm. Set your Sky+ thing, cause it won't be on iPlayer.

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Fifth(!) trailer for latest Harry Potter

Yes, there is still no new music worth mentioning.

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Disney conspiracy!

This video, entitled "Disney only ever made one movie, and they've been tracing it ever since", has been doing the rounds in animation circles for years, but I hadn't seen it online til now:



It's an interesting piece of video - and if you know your Disney, you can see that the practice of reusing animation sequences seems to have become more common during the lean financial years after "Uncle" Walt died.

That's not to say it's all a big conspiracy, however... At least a few of those scenes are deliberate copies - animators paying tribute to their forebears. What's more, in the days before motion capture, Disney artists used a technique called Rotoscoping - tracing over live-action film, frame-by-frame, to capture movement. With limited resources, they likely reused the same pieces of footage as reference points from time to time.

Some people have commented that this "spoils" and "devalues" Disney's old movies. I can't really see how it changes anything about them - the stories, songs and characters are as good (or bad) as they ever were. And there's a certain value in these old skills and techniques having been passed down through the years.

What do you think?

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