The James Bond Songs

Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism

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by Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold

Type: Studies
Subject: One Film > James Bond
Keywords: James Bond, music
Publishing date: 2015
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 256 pages
6 ½ x 9 ¼ inches (16.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-023452-2

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Book Presentation:
• Shows how a listener can think with and about pop music
• Illustrates how our conception of what a pop song is has changed over time
• Tells the story of a cultural property caught between a fixed brand aesthetic and a pop-music landscape that won't stand still
• Brief thematic chapters for the general reader rather than the cultural historian

Starting with 1964's Goldfinger, every James Bond film has followed the same ritual, and so has its audience: after an exciting action sequence the screen goes black and the viewer spends three long minutes absorbing abstract opening credits and a song that sounds like it wants to return to 1964. In The James Bond SongsR authors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold use the genre to trace not only a changing cultural landscape, but also evolving conceptions of what a pop song is. They argue that the story of the Bond song is the story of the pop song more generally, and perhaps even the story of its end.

Each chapter discusses a particular segment of the Bond canon and contextualizes it in its eras music and culture. But the book also asks how Bond and his music reflected and influenced our feelings about such topics as masculinity, race, money, and aging. Through these individual pieces the book presents the Bond song as the perfect anthem of late capitalism. The Bond songs want to talk about the fulfillment that comes from fast cars, shaken Martinis and mindless sex, but their unstable speakers, subjects, and addressees actually undercut the logic of the lifestyle James Bond is sworn to defend. The book is an invitation to think critically about pop music, about genre, and about the political aspects of popular culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

About the authors:
Adrian Daub, Associate Professor of German Studies, Stanford University, and Charles Kronengold, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Stanford University Adrian Daub is Associate Professor of German Studies at Stanford University and author of Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth-Century Culture (2014), Uncivil Unions - The Metaphysics of Marriage in German Idealism and Romanticism (2012), and Tristan's Shadow - Sexuality and the Total Work of Art (2013). Charles Kronengold is Associate Professor of Musicology at Stanford University.

Press Reviews:
"The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism endeavors to trace not only the history of the James Bond music, but also the culture that the music influenced and the culture which influenced the music ... This may be an excellent book for a graduate seminar in popular music history." - Amanda Pilmer Roberts, Music Reference Services Quarterly

"Daub and Kronengold's knowledge of the Bond franchise literary, cinematic and musical is thorough and well-informed, and their ability to make connections suggests they have spent much of their lives in the company of Agent 007." - Andrew Ford, Inside Story

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

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