Skyfall? Or Passing Showers? And Why do I Care?

I once worked in a seafood restaurant owned by Rick Stein, where one night Stein's culinary counterpart Raymond Blanc arrived and sat at the bar. Blanc ordered a dozen plump Cornish oysters, served atop a bed of crushed ice on a glimmering metal tray the size of a shield. In this kind of restaurant a creeping smarminess is considered the only suitable interaction with the smug families that arrive from nearby yachts and second homes (the sorts of families whose parents make their four year olds complain about the tap water or send back their own lobster - something those four year olds do with relish and impossibly well-practiced contempt). With this dignity-effacing smarminess I asked Blanc if his oysters were to his satisfaction.

"Non", he replied, frowning slightly. "Zey are ok, but oysteurs should be crisp, zey should have zeeeng".

What does this have to do with Adele and her theme song for the new James Bond film? The Skyfall theme, like those oysters, seems to have all the right constituents - powerful, distinctive vocals, a bed of plush orchestral waves and the film's title scattered across a slightly inexplicable love story narrative (especially inexplicable considering 007's chequered and fickle relationship history). But past these ingredients the song drifts by, digestible but hardly awe inspiring, lacking the bombast and personality of Shirley Bassey's 'Diamonds Are Forever' or Paul McCartney's 'Live and Let Die'. No zing.

And then there's three minutes of chorus to close the thing out, recognisable as such only for it's repetition of the title. Skyfall? This is just . . . drizzle.

And the worst thing is that people - like me - are gullible enough to think for a second that this is important. Another mediocre, studio-approved theme tune, for another medicore installment in a franchise that relies on its bad films to make the mediocre ones look good. But people go for it. I went for it. I had to write most of an article about the song (a theme tune for a movie - not even the movie itself) before the inanity overwhelmed me and I couldn't even be bothered to fini... blah blah, Skyfall, blah blah, drizzle . . .grey-day piss shower boredom . . oysters . . . blah.