Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey song)

Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were asked to create the lyrics for the song. But when its composer John Barry played them the first three notes, Bricusse and Newley looked at each other and sang out: ". . . wider than a mile," to the melody of "Moon River," the popular theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Barry was not amused.

One source of inspiration was the song "Mack the Knife", which director Guy Hamilton showed Barry, thinking it was a "gritty and rough" song that could be a good model for what the film required. Bricusse and Newley were not shown any film footage or script excerpts, but were advised of the fatal gilding suffered by the Jill Masterson character, played by Shirley Eaton. Bricusse later recalled that once he and Newley hit upon utilizing "the Midas touch" in the lyric, the pattern of the song became evident and the lyrics were completed within a couple of days at most.

The first recording of "Goldfinger" was made by Newley on 14 May 1964, with Barry as conductor, which produced two completed takes. Barry recalled that Newley gave a "very creepy" performance which he (Barry) considered "terrific". Newley's recording, however, was made purely as a demo for the film's makers. According to Barry, Newley "didn't want to sing it in the movie as they [Newley and Bricusse] thought the song was a bit weird".

Shirley Bassey was Barry's choice to record the song. He had been the conductor on Bassey's national tour in December 1963 and the two had also been romantically involved. Barry had played Bassey an instrumental track of the song before its lyrics were written. The singer recalled that hearing the track had given her "goose bumps". She agreed to sing the song whatever the lyrics might eventually be. Bassey recorded the track on 20 August 1964 at London's CTS Studios in Wembley. The producer credit named Bassey's regular producer George Martin, but the session was, in fact, overseen by Barry. Vic Flick, Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan are all said to have been at the sessions.

Page recalls attending the sessions, but session musicians on the Bond films were separately relegated to the instrumental score versions of songs, while the main musicians (on Goldfinger: Vic Flick) were given the main theme song to solely record, to be featured at the beginning of the film,[4] leaving Page as a background acoustic contributor to Flick on the instrumental version of the song.

The recording of "Goldfinger" lasted all night because Barry demanded repeated takes, not due to any shortcomings in Bassey's vocal, but musical or technical glitches. Initially, Bassey had problems with the climactic final note, which necessitated her slipping behind a studio partition between takes to remove her bra. Bassey said of the final note: "I was holding it and holding it – I was looking at John Barry and I was going blue in the face and he's going – hold it just one more second. When it finished, I nearly passed out."

The iconic two-note phrase which is the basis for the song's introduction was not in the original orchestration, but occurred to Barry during a tea-break, following an hour and a half of rehearsal. By the time the musicians returned, twenty minutes later, he had written the figure into the orchestration.

The single was released in mono, with the album stereo version (on the film soundtrack, Golden Hits Of Shirley Bassey and subsequent releases) using an alternate mix, in which the instrumentals are the same, but Bassey's vocal is different, being a shade less intense and having a shorter final note. Newley's version was released in 1992 to mark the 30th anniversary of James Bond on film, in a compilation collector's edition, The Best of Bond... James Bond.

Bassey's title theme was almost taken out of the film because producer Harry Saltzman hated it, saying, "That's the worst *** song I've ever heard in my *** life". Saltzman also disliked Bassey's subsequent Bond theme for Diamonds Are Forever. However, there was not enough time for a replacement song to be written and recorded.

The release on vinyl of Bassey's (mono) version, UA 790, sold more than a million copies in the United States (Guinness Book of Records), and it also reached No. 1 in Japan, No. 4 in Australia, and the Top 10 of many European countries including Austria (No. 7), Belgium (No. 9 on the Dutch charts), Germany (No. 8), Italy (No. 3), the Netherlands (No. 5), and Norway (No. 7). A No. 24 hit in France, Bassey's "Goldfinger" was not one of Bassey's biggest hits in her native UK, its No. 21 peak being far lower than that of the nine Top 10 hits she'd previously scored, but despite Bassey subsequently returning to the UK Top 10 three more times, "Goldfinger" would ultimately become her signature song in the UK as well as the rest of the world. In 2002 poll in which BBC Radio 2 solicited listeners' favourite piece of popular music from the last fifty years performed by a British act, "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey ranked at No. 46.[5]

• James Bond music
• Outline of James Bond