By Billie Eilish is writing and singing the theme song for No Time To Die, Daniel Craig's final film as James Bond, and as everyone's already observed, it's very, very good that Eilish is on board. She's great. She's also very much not classic Bond theme song material, and her involvement is as clear a sign as we've seen so far that No Time To Die will not be your average Bond film.
In some ways, though, she's an obvious pick. She's at the apex of the arc that a new pop star follows when everything aligns right from the start: established at the top of the tree but nowhere near stale, with loads of new fans but not far enough along the road for the ones who got in at the ground floor to moan about preferring previous 'eras'. In normal times, advisers would have made sure she was the answer to the standard how-much-is-a-pint-of-milk question of what the Prime Minister had been listening to recently.
No matter what happens next, this is the version of Eilish that will likely stick in the public imagination: the boxy co-ordinated two-pieces, the neon green hair, the collection of mad shades. She also, famously, had no idea who Van Halen were, an attitude toward Van Halen which history will vindicate.
Right now she's still a lot less establishment than Grammy magnets Adele and Sam Smith, too. But more to the point, she's extremely unlikely to follow those two in suddenly parping out a Bond-by-numbers theme. You know the ones: they sound a bit like 'Goldfinger', with slow-blaring brass, a lung-busting vocal on the Shirley Bassey-Tina Turner-Gladys Knight axis, and a BPM that barely troubles the double digits. Never mind that the best Bond themes β 'Nobody Does It Better', 'A View To A Kill', 'You Only Live Twice' β sound absolutely nothing like 'Goldfinger'. The Bond theme apparently must be turgidly slow and howled out at hurricane force. Did Carly Simon die for this? No. No, she didn't. (She's not dead.)
It might point to a total change of emphasis for Bond. The pick for the title song is a statement of intent. Adele fitted with the 2012 vibe, when British culture was briefly thrust centre stage: she was the biggest act in the world at the same time as the Olympics were starting to look like they might not be terrible, and Skyfall was the megahit of the year. Chris Cornell's 'You Know My Name' was a guttural roar that split Casino Royale from the Pierce Brosnan years. Hauling Bassey in a third time for 'Moonraker' was an early indicator that nobody really knew what the point of James Bond was anymore after Star Wars.
Eilish definitely isn't going to belt anything out, and if we get Eilish's full spooky, spacey, whispery style, the kind of numbed and bleary sound of 'bury a friend' or 'when the party's over', it'll be a complete 180-degree turn from pretty much all recent themes. Remember that Radiohead's 'Spectre' was rejected last time around for being too gloomy. It wasn't the first time either: Pet Shop Boys' doomy demo for 'The Living Daylights' got a no thanks, as did Pulp's waftily downbeat 'Tomorrow Never Lies'.
So what does Eilish's involvement mean for No Time To Die? It might be nothing. It might be that producers grabbed the coolest musician they could think of who wasn't on tour or holiday at the time. But it could be a pointer β along with the script retouches from Phoebe Waller-Bridge β that Craig's final Bond film will look and sound very different to his previous four. His Bond has been hounded by ghosts of his past throughout his run β now those ghosts might be about to be placed centre stage.
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