10 Best James Bond Songs That Were REJECTED (And Why)

Rejected because: They wanted to do the whole score

Just like the movies they accompany, Bond music had to move with the times. In the 1980s that meant pairing John Barry's more traditional orchestral scores with contemporary electronic instrumentation. This resulted in several artistic clashes between Barry and the 80s pop acts behind the decade's Bond hits: Duran Duran and A-ha. If they had had their way, however, one major 80s band could have given us a whole electro Bond score.

Before A-ha were picked up to do what is actually a pretty good 80s pop-rock take on a Bond theme for Timothy Dalton's debut in The Living Daylights, the Pet Shop Boys were approached instead.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe were excited by the prospect of providing the musical backing to a new era of Bond. So excited in fact that they weren't content with simply providing the theme, but instead set about working on demos for an electronic soundtrack to the whole movie.

Producers at Eon wanted a marketable pop hit, though, not an inventive new soundtrack to the whole movie, so went with the Norwegian Take On Me singers and another John Barry orchestral score instead.

The Pet Shop Boys, meanwhile, reworked their Bond demos into the song This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave from their 1990 Behaviour album. With its synthesizers and drum machines, the song is nothing like a big Shirley Bassey number, but it does have the atmospheric feel of a Bond theme nonetheless. It certainly would have been interesting to hear the whole movie sound like this.