The melody feels as potent and foreboding when transposed to a full orchestra as it does when it’s played in a rock-opera style.Chris Cornell, who has died at the age of 52, will be remembered by fans for the groundbreaking grunge-rock he made with his band Soundgarden in the Eighties and Nineties, and for his time with 'supergroup' Audioslave, as well as his varied solo work.īut the singer was also a notable contributor to movie and television scores: his songs featured on several popular soundtracks, while he also composed original music and songs for a number of well-known films and series. Reprising the theme song in a Bond film score isn’t a new practice, but the handoff between Cornell and Arnold, the “Casino Royale” composer, makes the song feel even more timeless. It paved the way for “Another Way to Die,” Jack White and Alicia Keys’ unlikely, woefully underrated addition to the Bond theme collection. “Casino Royale”īut there’s something about the way Cornell approached the task that incorporated the past and carved a way forward. And while Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” is great, all it takes is a few bars to pin down the era it hails from. Adele’s “Skyfall” is a conscious recreation of those early Bond ballads. It helps that “You Don’t Know My Name” feels like it’s from the 2000s without being constricted by a time period. “Casino Royale” needed an reinvention that attracted a newer, fiercer Bond for the post-9/11 age, but one that was still conversant with the iconography of the character. (“The mericless eyes of deceit,” if you will, as Cornell rumbles in the opening.)

It’s something that Sam Smith echoed less effectively in his “SPECTRE” song, an attempt to recreate, in song form, the endless tug-of-war between Bond’s personal and professional entanglements. Switching back and forth between octaves, “You Know My Name” is a man effectively in a duet with himself, plumbing the lower, sultry half of the melody (“when you return to the night”) just before hopping up into a full-voiced falsetto (“the game that we have been playing”).

The song is also an impressive showcase for Cornell’s four-octave vocal range.

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