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Got You Covered: “Nobody Does It Better”

October 19, 2010 | Comment

singleAh, the James Bond theme song: a sub-genre unto itself. There are songs, and there are movie songs, and then there are movie theme songs… and only then is there the Bond film song: a sub-sub-sub-genre distinctive for being (like the Bond movies themselves) unabashedly over-the-top. The best Bond songs are broad-stroke, go-for-broke, balls-out records: Shirley Bassey’s clarion “Goldfinger,” Paul McCartney & Wings’s churning “Live and Let Die,” and the subject of this post, “Nobody Does It Better.” Composed by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, it played under the opening titles of the 1977 Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. Carly Simon’s warm, wide-open performance of the pop ballad caught the fancy of moviegoers1 and radio station directors alike, and the single reached #2 on the U.S. pop charts. Here’s the first minute or so, just for nostalgia’s sake:

Like just about all of the songs in my Got You Covered series, “Nobody Does It Better” has been covered more times than a 90-year-old exhibitionist. Before I highlight my favorite version, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the rendition by Radiohead. A taste: Read the rest of this entry »


The Heavy is Beyond Funky–They’re Filthy

January 8, 2010 | 2 comments

So there I was, browsing through the various free downloads available at NPR Music (recession-friendly shopping, as I think of it). I had found some stuff I liked pretty well—at the very least, well enough to download it for free. Then I stumbled across something that I found truly exciting, and I reacted the way any music lover would: I thought, “I must blog this.”

Unlike the other artists whose music I’d just downloaded (stuff by The Decemberists, K’Naan and Heartless Bastards, among others), I’d never heard of the British band The Heavy. Well, now I have… and you have too. Watch this:
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