Song: Writing’s on the Wall (SPECTRE)
Performed by: Sam Smith
It’s rumored that Sam Smith wrote the lyrics to Writing’s on the Wall in 20 minutes, and after listening to it, I could believe that. There’s something missing here, it feels like a first draft. The song feels incomplete. Something was supposed to happen at some point in this tune and they just never got around to putting it in.
Sam Smith won an Oscar for this, and I’m not going to knock him for having a unique voice in a sea of familiar sounds, but like many elements of SPECTRE, the overwhelming success of Skyfall and it’s mastery of the fundamental James Bond elements set too high a standard for the successor to possibly match, and I think the expedited production schedule allowed room for compromise to find a way in.
Like the movie, it’s not bad, it’s just a bit disappointing.
