Casino Royale - The Soundtrack

1 of the major parts of every Bond movie is the score. It helps to set the mood as well as helps the flow of the movie. John Barry set the standard in Dr. No & did most of scores for the movies in the 60s through the 80s. David Arnold took over in Tommorow Never Dies & has done an excellent job of keeping up the standard set by John Barry.

The score for Casino Royale continues to live up to that standard. The music works well in every scene. David Arnold has again lived up to expectations. The title song, You Know My Name, written by Chris Cornell & David Arnold is 1 of the better themes & wisely avoids using Casino Royale as a title.

The soundtrack album deals with a problem of many of the past albums in that it has all the different music used in the movie. In the past the fact that the complete score wasn't included on the album. In the early years part of the problem was the limits of what could be fitted on to a vinyl LP. This wasn't true when the music was released on CDs, yet for various reasons they still didn't put all the music in the album. For Tommorow Never Dies the outcry was so huge that they issued a 2nd CD with the music not on the 1st. & they have begun issuing expanded versions of the early soundtracks on CD. The irony of the Casino Royale soundtrack album is that while having all the score it doesn't contain the title song. That makes absolutely no sense to me. But, I suppose there is a logical reason for it that I haven't heard of yet.

The Bond scores & soundtrack albums have been a reflection of the style of music for the time in which they are written. This is also true of the title songs & singers. Casino Royale's score & soundtrack continue in that tradition. If you haven't seen the movie yet there are some spoiler titles on the track list, so be warned.