1977 · Behind the Songs
The Bond theme that outgrew its film.
The recording in context
When the producers of 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me needed a theme song, they turned to composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Carole Bayer Sager — and to Carly Simon, whose voice could sell both intimacy and grandeur. “Nobody Does It Better” was the first Bond theme whose title differed from its film’s, and it became the biggest Bond song yet: a top-ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and the first Bond song to earn Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for its writers.
Listen closely
The record opens with one of the great sustained notes in pop — Simon holding a single tone over a swelling arrangement until it blooms into the melody. Listen to how the song keeps that tension between softness and scale: the verses are almost whispered confidences, and then the chorus opens up like a cinema screen, strings and all. It’s a love song disguised as a theme song, or maybe the reverse.
What lifts it above the Bond-song formula is Simon’s phrasing. She never belts; she insinuates, and the orchestra has to come to her. Notice how she leans into the title line — not as a boast but as a quiet certainty. The arrangement understands this perfectly, building its cathedral of strings around a vocal that never raises its voice.
Decades later, it remains the Bond theme other Bond themes are measured against — and proof that Carly Simon could do sweeping romance just as devastatingly as she did sharp-eyed confession.