Los Angeles - American teen pop sensation
Billie Eilish, fresh off her big Grammy Awards victory and an
Oscar night performance, has released her much-anticipated
official theme song to the forthcoming James Bond film "No Time
to Die."
The four-minute ballad, a haunting song of betrayal and
despair co-written by Eilish and her older brother, Finneas, and
performed to an orchestral arrangement, was posted on Thursday
to YouTube and various music streaming sites.
The recording, itself titled "No Time to Die," was produced
by Finneas with a musical arrangement by Hans Zimmer and Matt
Dunkley. The track, released by Eilish's Interscope
Records/Darkroom label, includes veteran British session
musician Johnny Marr on guitar.
Eilish, 18, becomes the youngest artist ever to write and
record a James Bond theme song, following in the footsteps of
such stars as Adele, Madonna and Paul McCartney.
The song's foreboding lyrics more than suggest a romance
that meets with a decidedly unhappy ending, as Eilish sings in a
chorus:
"Fool me once, fool me twice/Are you death or paradise?
"Now you'll never see me cry/There's just no time to die."
The movie "No Time to Die," the 25th title in the James Bond
motion picture franchise, is due to arrive in theaters in
April, with Daniel Craig resuming his title role as the British
secret agent for a fifth and final time.
Eilish is slated to perform the theme song live for the
first time at the Brit Awards in London Feb. 18, ahead of the
March 9 launch of her North American arena tour, Interscope said
in a statement.
She had widely been expected to debut the Bond single at the
Academy Awards show on Sunday, but she sang the Beatles'
"Yesterday" during the telecast's in memoriam segment instead.
Two weeks earlier Eilish swept the Grammys by taking the
four top prizes - best album, best record, song of the year and
best new artist - becoming only the second musician to win all
four categories on the same night.
Eilish wrote and recorded most of her debut studio album -
"When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" - with her brother,
Finneas, 22, in the small bedroom of their Los Angeles-area
home.
The album, including such hits as "When the Party's Over,"
"Everything I Wanted" and "Bad Guy," ranked as the No. 1 album
of 2019.