Song · A Moon Shaped Pool era (2015–21)
Spectre
Radiohead offered the producers of the 2015 Bond film two songs, and both were turned down.
2014–15
the commission
The Bond production team asked Radiohead to write the theme for Spectre. Sam Mendes was directing it, and he and Daniel Craig were both fans. In July 2015 William Hill suspended betting after someone tried to put £15,000 on the band at ten to one.
They first offered “Man of War”, a 1990s song Thom Yorke has described as a homage to Bond themes. The producers liked it and turned it down anyway, because a song not written for the film could not be nominated for Best Original Song. So Radiohead stopped work on A Moon Shaped Pool and went into Air Studios with Nigel Godrich to write a new one.
2015
why bond said no
The film used Sam Smith's “Writing's on the Wall”, and everyone involved has a different reason. Jonny Greenwood said theirs was judged “too dark”. Yorke put it down to “just politics as far as I can tell”. The producer Barbara Broccoli said it simply arrived too late, by which time the title sequence had been cut to the other song, and Mendes tried to place it elsewhere in the film and found the words too distracting.
Godrich, who lost studio time to it, called the whole thing a real waste of energy.
25 dec 2015
given away
The band kept the rights, and on Christmas Day 2015 they put it online free with a note from Yorke, their first release since 2011.
That side of it was really positive… We get to have it back and it's ours and we got to put it out. We're really, really proud of it.
jonny greenwood · bbc news, 16 june 2016
It is an orchestral ballad, sung in falsetto over strings and jerky piano, with just enough of the Bond gesture left in, and Pitchfork made it Best New Music. Sam Smith, backstage at the Golden Globes in January with the award for best original song, was asked about it and had to be told the name of the band; he said he had not listened to it, because he had done the Spectre theme. It later went on the B-side of the “Burn the Witch” 7-inch and the special edition of A Moon Shaped Pool.
2018
yorke first
Yorke played it before Radiohead did, alone at the piano at the end of his solo shows in Milan on 29 May and at the Roundhouse in London on 8 June 2018. At the Palace Theatre in Manchester on 10 June, about two thousand people heard him mention the band for the first time that night when he came back for a second encore.
I'm going to do this song by the band that I'm in, Radiohead.
thom yorke · palace theatre, manchester, 10 june 2018
The band took it up a month later, at the United Center in Chicago on 7 July, the second night of their North American tour, and played it on seven nights that summer, the last of them Philadelphia on 1 August 2018.
2026
the proms
In the end it got a night among the Bond themes. At the BBC Proms on 25 August 2026, in a concert of Bond songs called Bond and Beyond at the Royal Albert Hall, Naomi Banks sang it with the BBC Concert Orchestra under Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser. Louise Penn, reviewing the night for BroadwayWorld, wrote that Radiohead's unused theme sparkled.
on stage
Live at Bell Centre, 2018.· noise_jamwatch on youtube →
the record(2)
on stage(2)
explained
The chords Bond themes are built on, and how the theme the producers turned down uses them.· Listening Inwatch on youtube →
videos(2)
Live history
| Times played | 16 shows · 9 of them Thom Yorke solo shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | by Thom Yorke, solo, Tuesday 29 May 2018 · Milan |
| Last played | by Thom Yorke, solo, Saturday 9 April 2022 · Zermatt |
| Last by Radiohead | Wednesday 1 August 2018 · Philadelphia |
Thom Yorke, solo 29 May 2018 Milan, 30 May 2018 Zurich, 1 June 2018 Berlin, 3 June 2018 Brussels, 4 June 2018 Amsterdam, 8 June 2018 London, 10 June 2018 Manchester, 26 October 2019 Las Vegas, 9 April 2022 Zermatt
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. Thom Yorke’s solo nights are counted and marked as his; the openers, closers, longest absence and chart are Radiohead’s own. All setlist stats →
Heard in (1)
- SpectreCommissioned for the Bond film and turned down in favour of Sam Smith's; the band put it out free on 25 December 2015.
sources15
- “Radiohead reveal rejected theme for James Bond film Spectre”, BBC News, 25 December 2015.
- Matt Everitt, interview with Jonny Greenwood for BBC 6 Music, published as “Radiohead interview: ‘It's a very happy time’”, BBC News, 16 June 2016, for “too dark” and getting the song back.
- Andy Greene, “19 things we learned hanging out with Radiohead”, Rolling Stone, 8 June 2017.
- Sam Mendes, interviewed by Miranda Sawyer, Sound and Vision, BBC Radio 6 Music, 5 November 2017.
- The Sound of 007, Amazon Prime, October 2022.
- Andrew Trendell, NME, 3 October 2018.
- Winston Cook-Wilson, “Radiohead: ‘Spectre’”, Pitchfork, 4 January 2016.
- “Bond theme betting suspended”, The Guardian, 29 July 2015.
- Miles Bowe, Fact, 12 January 2016, for Sam Smith at the Golden Globes.
- Claudio Biazzetti, Rolling Stone Italia, 30 May 2018, and Oliver Kemp, The Line of Best Fit, June 2018, for Yorke ending his Milan and Roundhouse shows with it.
- Joe Goggins, live report, Loud And Quiet, 11 June 2018, for Manchester.
- DIY, 9 July 2018, and Grace Fleisher, Dancing Astronaut, 9 July 2018, for the first full-band performance in Chicago.
- BBC Radio 3, “BBC Proms, 2026, Bond and Beyond”, programme page and music list, 25 August 2026, for the singer, the orchestra and the conductor.
- Louise Penn, review, BroadwayWorld, 26 August 2026, for the Proms.
- Performance dates from this site's own setlist archive.