"The Sound of 007 - Live From the Royal Albert Hall", available on Amazon Prime Video, is a live concert from the famous London venue featuring a selection of music from the Bond series.
It's a bit of a mixed bag: there are some standout performances and a few painful duds.... you can tell those from the more muted levels of applause from the Bond fans present! And at only 59 minutes long, there is a frustrating amount of concert footage that never made the final cut!
Positives: Some of the highlights of the concert are:
- Shirley Bassey, at 85 years old and still able to bash out almost perfect renditions of "Diamonds are Forever" (one of my favourite Bond songs) and "Goldfinger". (She was first on... clearly she had to dash off for her cocoa!)
- Lulu, again looking spectacularly good for 73 years old, belting out "The Man With The Golden Gun".
- Hans Zimmer and David Arnold with an orchestral piece from "No Time To Die". The arrangement is probably closest to the track "Cuba Chase", which is my absolute favourite on the soundtrack album.
- David Arnold gave an emotional tribute to his friend Chris Cornell before announcing that he was going to sing the track "You Know My Name" (from "Casino Royale"). "Uh-oh" I thought! But he actually did a knock-out job with it.
- It's not my favourite Bond song by a long chalk, but Paloma Faith was born to sing a Bond title track... and she brought "Goldeneye" to life for sure.
- David Arnold rounding off the evening with his lively arrangement of the Bond theme from the end titles of "Casino Royale", playing the famous guitar riff (as indeed he did on the original recording - see "The Sound of 007" documentary).
Neutrals - Performances that I thought were "so-so":
- Jamie Cullum did a reasonable job with "From Russia With Love", although he seemed to rush through some elements of the song... at times the orchestra seemed to be struggling to catch up. He also, sadly, demonstrated just what an immaculate talent the late Matt Monro had when singing the original.
- Emma Lindars... she wasn't Adele (who is, other than Adele), but she made a pretty good stab at "Skyfall".
- Similarly Ella Eyre had a good crack at "Licence to Kill".
- The Garbage performance of "The World is Not Enough" felt underpowered and had some tuning issues. It was great to get another original artist on the stage, but unlike Bassey and Lulu, it wasn't a great rendition of her original.
- Skin's rendition of "Live and Let Die" was more like B. J. Arnau's version from the "Fillet of Soul": it was "OK" without being spectacular.
Negatives - The low points for me:
- Celeste managed to completely murder (imho) "You Only Live Twice". She's clearly a great singer, but this song just didn't suit her at all. #Uncomfortable.
- John Grant had all sorts of tuning issues with "We Have All The Time In the World" (from OHMSS). Painful.
- I'll also add in here that given Amazon is a streaming platform, it's a huge disappointment that the whole concert couldn't have been aired. (I have a list of the missing performances in my full review on One Mann's Movies).
Summary Thoughts: I saw the tickets for this concert and baulked at the price. And I rather wish I had been there, just to catch Shirley Bassey and Lulu belting out their classic songs. But overall I think I would have been a bit disappointed that the high quality shown in some of the performances couldn't have been maintained throughout.
