James Bond: Ranking The Theme Songs From Worst To Best

10. Live and Let Die - Paul McCartney & Wings

Live and Let DieDescription: While some Beatles fans may have been hard sold on Sir Paul's solo efforts with Wings, it's safe to assume that this song helped change most of their minds. Those who didn't change their tune, still found this one the rare exception to McCartney's rants about running bands and silly love songs. The first of Roger Moore's tenure, Bond still retained a hard edge that he would start to lose starting with the next film down the line, The Man With The Golden Gun. For this brief moment though, The Bond series retained its hard image with this highly bombastic tune that any guitarist worth their salt can play. Choice Lyrics: "When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live/But if this ever changing world we live in makes you give in and cry, say live and let die." Right out of the gate, we're set up with the duality of man: love and hate, life and death, calm and chaos. It's a balance the song revisits to great effect later on, and it only helps indicate the state that even the Bond franchise was in. It was between someone who loathed playing the role and someone who absolutely loved playing the role, between a Bond who was ready to live a simple life and a Bond who'll never stop until his vengeance is had. This is the Bond we like to think of when we talk about his exploits, and this is just the song to symbolize the yin and the yang of James.
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Mike Reyes may or may not be a Time Lord, but he's definitely the Doctor Who editor here at What Culture. In addition to his work at What Culture, Mr. Reyes writes for Cocktails and Movies, as well as his own personal blogs Mr. Controversy and The Bookish Kind. On top of that, he's also got a couple Short Stories and Novels in various states of completion, like any good writer worth their salt. He resides in New Jersey, and compiles his work from all publications on his Facebook page.