CD Review: Shaken and Stirred

Because I’m such a fan of James Bond movies, I bought a compilation CD of remakes of James Bond theme songs, called Shaken and Stirred. It’s the type of thing that people who consider themselves “hard core” James Bond fans would probably hate, because they’d consider it sacrilege, but I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, it’s really bad. It’s a CD of remakes, and every single song on the album is worse than the original. Not just the arrangements, but even the singers; when Shirley Bassey or Louis Armstrong was the original singer, how can anyone else compare?

Easily the worst song on the album is the James Bond Theme itself. I don’t know how they got away with trying to call this song a remake, because it’s nothing like the original. It doesn’t have the same—or even a similar—tune, it doesn’t have the same feel, it doesn’t have the same anything. It’s just a song, that happens to sample a couple of pieces of the original theme, in a couple of places. And even the samples aren’t prominent, so that’s not enough to make it a remake either.

So, now that I’ve been so disappointed by this album, I guess I’m going to go out and look for a compilation album of the original Bond theme songs. Some of them are really good, and this crappy album just whet my appetite.