15. Johnny Cash's "Thunderball"
https://youtu.be/R3rqS98seNA Thunderball (when adjusted for inflation) is the highest-grossing James Bond film of all-time. Released in 1965, only a few days before Christmas, United Artists were well into their stride. Goldfinger had stormed it the year before and Sean Connery was proving to be box office gold. Enter The Man in Black. Eon Productions had asked Johnny Cash to throw his cowboy hat into the ring and he duly obliged. The resulting recording is... very, very country. On paper a song from a musical outlaw should have matched 007's persona exactly and, if you can listen past the pedestrian, typically ploddy rhythm it does, but overall Cash's Thunderball theme sounds more like it belongs in a Mel Blanc spoof. Johnny Cash wasn't the only major recording artist to have been denied the honour of singing the Thunderball theme. Both Shirley Bassey and Dionne Warwick's versions of Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang were given the bullet before Tom Jones famously blacked out after hitting the final note on what would be the eventual main title song.