- Song/Theme: Licence to Kill
- Created by: Jeffrey Cohen, Narada Michael Walden, Walter Afanasieff
- Performers: Gladys Knight
- Who is it about?: Unclear
- What's it about?: Some very controlling behaviour
An inevitable downside of working inwards from the present and the past on this project is that we would stop alternating decades and find ourselves in the 1980's for the final 6 songs. Technically we have one song from the 1970's left (Moonraker) but that is from 1979 and in British terms that is when the 1980's started with the election of Margaret Thatcher.
A divisive, jingoistic, gaudy and cynical decade in the UK, which should have suited Bond and yet the Bond films and songs from this period are rarely picked out as favourites. There are some fun songs still to come and many people have a song they like from this period but even then there is no consensus.
There's no better example of the confusing elements than this film. I love Timothy Dalton and he's arguably the best actor to play Bond based on his wider body of work. He does his best with the material here — a generic 80s revenge thriller about Latin American drug dealers that has a Bond-film plot woven into it. Perhaps a worse actor would have found a way of making these themes more inappropriately funny.
For the song, we have the Emperess of Soul herself, Gladys Knight. It's a decent 80's pop-soul song that has even less to do with the themes of the movie than usual. It did well in the charts and was a UK top-ten hit. It isn't very memorable though and while there are some musical clues to it being a Bond film, the title is the most obvious connection.
The lyrics...have their own aspect. A soul love song that has to work "licence to kill" into the lyrics ends up quite disturbing. Knight sings the thoughts of a woman with her eye on a specific person. She has a "licence to kill" and she is going straight for their heart — which is a metaphor but starts sounding a bit jealously literal as the song progresses:
"Say that somebody tries to make a move on you
In the blink of an eye, I will be there too
And they better know why I'm gonna make 'em pay
'Til their dying day
'Til their dying day
'Til their dying day
[Chorus]
Got a licence to kill
(To kill)
And you know I'm going straight for your heart, baby
(Got a licence to kill)"
https://genius.com/Gladys-knight-licence-to-kill-lyrics
Well, I wasn't planning on messing with Gladys Knight on matters of the heart anyway but I think she has given us fair warning. There's a Bond pastiche that could be made with Knight as the supervillain with her cadre of Pips dealing out romantic justice and they are coming for Bond for his philandering ways.
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