All Time High by Rita Coolidge Songfacts
All Time High by Rita Coolidge Songfacts
Songfacts
Rita Coolidge's career hit an all time high when she got to perform this theme song to the James Bond movie Octopussy. However, Coolidge was never a big fan of the song, as she felt the lyrics were never really finished.
The song was written by film composer John Barry and lyricist Tim Rice, who both worked on the music for Octopussy. Coolidge flew to London to record the song, and found that Rice was still working on the lyrics. "Even after we did the record, the song felt a little incomplete," she said.
Audiences did not share Coolidge's reticence, and the song was a hit. Bond themes are not literal, but written to capture the mood of the characters. This song is written from the perspective of a typical Bond girl who falls in love with 007 and finds herself on a thrilling adventure.
It Octopussy's producer Cubby Broccoli who chose Coolidge for the theme song. His daughter was a big fan of Rita, and convinced her dad that she was the right vocalist.
This is one of the few Bond theme songs that is not titled after the movie; understandable when you consider the implications of releasing a song called "Octopussy." The next Bond theme without the movie in the title was " You Know My Name ," which Chris Cornell wrote for the 2006 film Casino Royale. Cornell had no interest in writing a song titled "Casino Royale," but he would have written one called "Octopussy."
"Nobody wrote a song called 'Octopussy' but I think that was a mistake!," he told The Sun. "They had a great opportunity and they squandered it."
This song plays a part in the 2012 movie Ted, where Mark Wahlberg's character takes the stage at a Norah Jones and sings the song (poorly) to his estranged girlfriend, since they watched the movie Octopussy on their first night together. Wahlberg gets booed off the stage, but his talking bear companion says, "Still better than Katy Perry."