There’s a swirling chord progression which barely moves for the entirety of the song (which is a colossal four minutes and forty-six seconds long), the dynamic level barely goes further than mezzo-forte to forte and back again.Īdele, utterly spellbinding vocal talent that she is, basically whispers the whole song. So, let’s attempt to rationalise the song with its constituent parts. As a result, the sheer relief of hearing a passable Bond theme led listeners to believe that ‘Skyfall’ was a classic.

A theory for you: by the time ’Skyfall’ came along, there hadn’t been a classic Bond theme for many, many years (since 1995 to be precise).