Cameron Adams: Why Billie Eilish is the perfect choice for Bond
US teen Billie Eilish may be the youngest singer to land a James Bond song, but while people are claiming she’s too inexperienced to get the job, Cameron Adams thinks it’s a stroke of genius.
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This week American teenager Billie Eilish became the youngest singer to land a James Bond theme tune.
If you read some of the saltier online reaction, the 18-year-old’s song (which no one has heard yet) is about to kill the franchise (which appears to be bulletproof) and she’s too inexperienced to get the job.
Sheesh.
On the contrary, Eilish is an inspired choice from Bond HQ which has continued the recent form of recruiting popular, younger acts like Adele and Sam Smith.
If you’re not aware — or don’t have teenagers nearby — Eilish dominated music in 2019.
Her debut album ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go’ was the biggest selling album in Australia last year and Eilish and 22-year-old brother Finneas wrote and produced the record themselves, at their parent’s home in Los Angeles.
Side note: Finneas paid off their parents’ mortgage at the end of last year, noting that what they saved on studio time and catering would be about the same as what was left on the mortgage.
Eilish’s songs are incredibly visual and cinematic and her dark and gothic music videos have been watched literally billions of times on YouTube.
Unlike most teenage artists, not only does she write her own songs, but their emotional resonance and musical boundary-pushing has seen her work hailed by those far beyond her own demographic.
Eilish has been nominated for six Grammy Awards at this months’ event, including Best New Artist (even though she’s been recording and touring since she was 14), Album of the Year and Song of the Year.
But no, the Twitter complaint squad think she’s too young, even too “Satanic”, to get the Bond gig, which was rumoured to go to Beyonce or Dua Lipa.
Eilish said James Bond is “the coolest franchise ever” with her song labelled “incredibly powerful and moving” by the film’s producers (who, admittedly, were hardly going to call it a dud).
The whole point of hiring Billie Eilish is to bring a new audience to James Bond. Fifty-eight years and 25 films in (with a box office of over $10 billion) the franchise constantly reinvents itself, from the person who plays James Bond down. Eilish telling her millions of fans worldwide that Bond is “cool” is a major early box office deposit on an audience who probably wouldn’t go to the new blockbuster otherwise.
The 25th film, No Time to Die, is already being labelled the “woke” Bond, with Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge involved in the script; another way to drag Bond into 2020, just like getting Eilish on board.
It’s nice to see someone involved in this film who is genuinely excited — remember Daniel Craig saying he’d “rather slash his wrist” than play Bond again back in 2015 and if he did another Bond movie “it would only be for the money”. Ka-ching, he’s back.
There have been only five Bond movies released in Eilish’s lifetime and two Bonds: Pierce Brosnan and Craig.
She’s grown up seeing Bond themes sung by artists still topping the charts, like Adele and Sam Smith, and while she may not have their traditional diva-style vocals, the franchise has taken musical risks in the past. And indeed, Eilish’s success has seen her subvert the mainstream, with Bad Guy becoming a massive commercial radio hit and No. 1 single.
Indie hero Jack White teamed with Alicia Keys for the Quantum of Solace theme in 2008 (Eilish recently recorded a one-take live album straight on to vinyl at White’s studios).
A hit Bond theme sung by a high-profile artist is smart marketing. Adele’s Skyfall in 2012 was the first time since Madonna’s Die Another Day a decade earlier that a Bond theme was a Top 10 hit in the US and UK.
Previously theme tunes by the late Chris Cornell, Garbage, Tina Turner and Sheryl Crow had not only missed the US charts, but were hardly anthems up there with Shirley Bassey’s Diamonds are Forever, Wings’ Live and Let Die, Carly Simon’s Nobody Does it Better or Duran Duran’s A View to a Kill.
As soon as Eilish posts her song to her 50 million Instagram followers alone, the Bond camp’s choice will have paid off.
And let’s wait until we hear the song, presumably around the time of the movie’s release in April, before pointing the (gold) finger.
Cameron Adams is national music writer. You can follow him on Twitter.