I’ll bet you think this DVA’s about you…
Does another Monday morning having you staring down clouds in your coffee? If you haven’t got time for the pain, then The Nest has just what you need coming around the bend with another lost hit from the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s got her best apricot scarf on to go with her rave outfit, while the Sponkies try to figure out just how Carly Simon is trying to “play possum”…
Ugh. Well, we won’t leave you in anticipation any longer for this week’s DVA selection….
Long before the 1980’s came along and turned the box office chart-topping hit into an art form, the James Bond movie franchise was turning to the very best artists of the day to sing a theme song based on each movie for the series. Of course, the use of the phrase “chart-topping” is kind of ironic here, since “Bond themes” notoriously never hit #1, at least in the US… with the lone exception of Duran Duran’s “A View To A Kill” in 1985.
After Wings took the theme for Live and Let Die to #2, Carly Simon came oh so close to breaking the curse herself…
“Nobody Does It Better” was the theme to the 1977 Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, and is one of the few Bond themes not to be named after the film itself. Carly was more than capable of writing her own songs, but this one was penned by prodigious songwriter Marvin Hamlisch, and the song is literally about how much of a fucking studmuffin James Bond is to the girls. But hey, it’s a really good song and one of, if not my very favorite from Simon.
There’s nothing wrong with being a #2 hit if you get stuck behind a masterpiece. Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is” spent an agonizing seven weeks at #1 behind Olivia Newton John’s “Physical.” Bruce Springsteen lost his lone shot at a #1 in “Dancing in the Dark to a pair of 80’s legends in Prince and Duran Duran. Elvis’ final big hit “Burning Love” got cockblocked from the #1 spot by Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-A-Ling.”
What kept “Nobody Does It Better” in the #2 spot for three weeks and kept it from achieving James Bond theme immortality?
“You Light Up My Life.”
Debby Effing Boone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the most godawful songs ever recorded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apparently nobody does it better than a crappy Christian country singer.
Join me next week as Muzak Monday turns ten years old….
There may be cake…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Foreigner and Carly Simon – love them.
Totally agree about Debbie Boone – for me that song was just – well a bit much. Cake? Did you say CAKE? We’ll be here in spite of the implied threat behind the photo of said CAKE.
Pam
The cake looks like you know what and tastes like you know what. But it will be baked with love, and that’s all that counts…
You’re ever so right about that gawd awful Debbie Boone disaster. Nobody likes bubblegum music to go #1. No-body!
Carly rocked this one and the piano playing was great. Thanks, Marvin.
I actually liked this live version better than the studio rendition, and it’s rare I prefer live to studio. NO version of Debby Boone will ever suffice…
Thank goodness!
I had no idea this song was Carly Simon. Or a Bond theme. Or an actual song, in fact. I thought it was a TV advert jingle…
Now I’m curious what it was advertising.
It was the supermarket “Safeway” in the 90’s.