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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The songs in the Bond franchise are more important to the greater movie-going masses than the underscore. Their legacy has extended into nearly every generation of American culture, and many casual music buyers purchase the Bond soundtracks only for the title song. The songs since the resurrection of the franchise in 1995 have been mediocre at best. From Tina Turner to Sheryl Crow and Garbage, the best of lot was ironically k.d. lang's title performance for Tomorrow Never Dies, which was rejected and sent to the end credits of the film. When Madonna was announced as the performer for the title song of Die Another Day, many Bond fans were cautiously optimistic. The female performers of Bond songs have traditionally featured a lustful, mature voice, and Madonna's voice has grown into exactly that type since her most popular slower ballads began to hit the air waves in the mid 1990s ("Take a Bow," "You'll See," "Frozen," "The Power of Good-Bye," etc). Additionally, her spectacular singing performances for the film Evita in 1996 exhibited a further ability to combine love and pizzazz on the big screen. Breaking with tradition, the title song for Die Another Day was not written by the composer, David Arnold. Instead, it was the result of Madonna, songwriter Michael Colombier, and producer Mirwais Ahmadzai, all of whom have collaborated on the singer's recent pop album releases. Unfortunately, for the Bond franchise and all of its loyal fans, the Madonna song is the worst disgrace ever to tarnish the opening credits of a James Bond film. There exists no insult that can adequately describe the trash that Madonna and her partners have attached to this film. In an endeavor to be thorough, however, an attempt will be made to explain --from the perspective of a Bond music expert-- why Madonna's Die Another Day song is both hideous and inappropriate. First, it completely ignores the genre of the Bond franchise. The title song in Bond films is either a pop rock song or a love ballad. The recent songs by Crow and Garbage, while neglecting the love aspect of the tradition, have at least played to the mainstream rock audience. The Die Another Day song is an enormous leap out of the mainstream and utilizes digital techno and electronica editing and mutilation that renders it useless for both the film and for the average listener. Forget the longtime Bond fans who owned all the John Barry LPs... the Die Another Day song will repulse people well beyond that small group. Secondly, the song is chopped up digitally into a nearly incomprehensible jarble of noise that honestly makes the listener believe for a moment that there is a horrible problem with his or her stereo system. There is no flow to the song, which hides perhaps the total inadequacy of the song's melody, or lack thereof. The melody is a simplistic range of just a few notes, rendering it nearly impossible for Arnold to adapt into the score. Finally, the lyrics of the song are even more ridiculous (or lame, if you want the common jargon) than those of other recent Bond films. In sum, this song will be painful to hear at the beginning of the film. An unequivocal disaster. If you can manage to survive the song at the start, the score by David Arnold is a continuation of the World is Not Enough line of thinking rather than the Tomorrow Never Dies true combination of orchestral jazz and electronic samplings. Arnold seems to have attempted, to some degree, to follow Madonna's lead, with the hovercraft chase scene chopped up with more of the same editing nonsense that ruined the song. Evidently, the portions of the orchestra are artificially edited to silence for a fraction of the second, causing a stop-go motion to the music that is probably intended to enhance the pace of the action in the film. It doesn't work. In fact, this same technique ruins several cues throughout the score, although to lesser degrees. It seems, upon repeat listens, that Arnold messed around with the natural reverberation sound of the orchestra and electronic programming. Notes begin normally, but end artificially too soon, and this is continued for countlessly progressive notes in some action cues. The result is a score that sometimes has abrupt edges for part or the whole of the performing group. This is particularly disturbing in the case of the larger orchestral cues because the original unaltered studio performance has quite a vibrant sound to it. There are a handful of cues left untampered with, and you can really hear the orchestra's vivacious power in the percussion of the Antonov track near the end. In other sections, the orchestra's solo performances seem to be edited not with silent sections, but rather with a simple removal of the reverberation, causing the score to sound as though it was recording in a tiny auditorium. The laser sound effects in the music are difficult to tolerate for any length of time. If the destruction of the music's flow during the editing process doesn't bother you in regards to the Die Another Day score, then perhaps the relentless slashing of the electronic programming will put you over the edge. Arnold's delicate, but successful balance between the John Barry orchestral jazz and his own electronica and techno tendencies in Tomorrow Never Dies is lost once again. He can't shake the constant electronic samplings --most often in the sound of electronic percussion-- for very long. Whenever he adopts a pure, Barry-like progression of strings, the cue is cut short by electronic laser sounds or the mad pounding of tinny drums. Absent from this score are some of the five or six minute juggernaut cues of orchestral and electronic mastery that Arnold has produced in the past. Even the lengthier action sequences in this film break from one genre of music to another before the listener can adapt. The few moments of more low key character building (such as the two Jinx tracks in the middle of the album) show hints of Arnold's talent, but he never unleashes the full orchestra in these moments. This score is, in a word, uninspired. It's Arnold going through the motions. He does, to his credit, insert a monumentally mixed choral sound into Die Another Day. The full male choral moments are an interesting and perhaps underexplored method of handling a master villain. The lengthy Antonov cue has a solo voice as well as an ensemble chorale, and these sometimes magnificent cues save the score from being a total waste. Also in favor of this score are several references to John Barry's style, including the well known snare rips that Barry loved to use while the villains were describing their nasty plans. Arnold also makes short references to his prior two Bond scores, as well as the bass opening of Goldeneye once again, and these are neatly tied together for avid score listeners to enjoy. And yet, on the whole, Die Another Day is a nearly miserable overall musical product. Something's just not right with the album in particular. Arnold finishes the score with a nearly comical parody of John Barry's 1960's finale love cues. It sounds so out of place and silly that it can make a person laugh and remember better times in the Bond franchise. The Paul Oakenfold remix of the classic Bond theme is overly-predictible and offers nothing of substance. There is an absence of an end credits song or suite. The Cuban flavored cue is barely tolerable and out of context. The stop-go editing is a jarring aspect to the overall product. The album is surprisingly short, continuing a trend of shorter albums for each successive Bond film. The CD is rich with enhanced features, including a movie poster gallery from Bond's history (to coincide with a similar full size poster collage available from dealers). The enhanced music features are nearly all dedicated to the song. Finally, the song, of course, cannot be overlooked when evaluating this album. Its total disregard for the Bond genre and its unlistenable editing is a waste of Madonna's mature voice and makes her sound as mousy as she did back in 1985. There is no cinematic sweep on this album, no melodic love theme to mark the film's place in the rich collection of Bond music. So whose fault is it? Did Madonna decide to break the rules and Arnold went along for the ride? Or did the director or producers demand a more strikingly modern and edgy attitude for the song and score? Was it... Satan? Either way, it's a failure all around. It is a sickening listening experience for which Tomorrow Never Dies is the only antidote.
Orchestral Score as Heard on Album: ** Overall Album Rating: *
The insert contains credits, but no extra information about the film, score, or song. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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