Which one would you consider the best?

I've heard On Her majesty's Secret Service praised as the best Bond score, but I love Conti's main theme from For Your Eyes Only too.

Seriously, my favorites are GOLDFINGER, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and MOONRAKER. I can't really recommend the sole Michael Kamen entry, as it's not up to his usual.

Seriously, I hope this does get an expanded release someday, since the current album has been oft played to the point that it's getting old....

With the recent job Ryko did on THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, I must say that is becoming a close fave also

When all is said and done, for me, as much praise as OHMSS gets from people, I prefer You Only Live Twice as the best Bond score.

It has a lovely main theme/Nancy Sinatra vocal, all those Japanese flavored cues, the wonderful Capsule in Space music, and a number of great action cues.

What's more, most of the best stuff is on the album. There are some great cues that didn't make the disc (Silva's Bond Back in Action pathetically tried to fill these in on their CD) but the orig. soundtrack has a good representation of the score.

OHMSS comes in as a quick second, almost a tie. But as stated before, the soundtrack doesn't capture all the great stuff that is in the score and it does stuff like mix the Blofeld hideaway cue together with the Convertible drive cue rather than give us both complete. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of great stuff on the soundtrack disc--the Louis Armstrong song, the pre-credits and credits music, the aforementione Blofeld/Convertible music and still more great action cues--and so you couldn't really go wrong there either.

Then comes The Living Daylights & Thunderball, though some of the best music from Thunderball is on the 2CD 30th Anniversary Bond collection rather than the original soundtrack disc. Goldfinger, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, and The Man With The Golden Gun all have one or two cues each which are amazing.

The nice thing about YOLT & OHMSS is that they are budget CDs, like $12 a piece. I pay more than that for Pizza once a week.

NP: FSM's From The Terrace CD (Elmer Bernstein)

Long before DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER hit my local fleapit, I heard the Bassy song on the radio A LOT. Those opening notes - mysterious, sexy, vaguely futuristic - just hypnotised me, and can still raise a chill today. I think I enjoyed the atmosphere of the movie more than the story itself - Connery seemed tougher, and Barry had refined the Bond sound into musical velvet - with a steel hand inside. (About a year later the Moon Buggy was toured around England - it came up north and I actually got to climb on the thing.)

James Bond should never go on a mission without John Barry.

...and, since this is another Bond thread...

For some reason the Bond reissues always arrived on the last weekend of the summer holidays ... another reason they seemed so compelling to my childish mind - they embodied the last exciting days of freedom before the boring drudge of school began again.

-Racerprose

YOLT is a very lush score and contains one of my favourite pieces - Mountains and Sunsets. Bond Averts WW3 is one of the best action cues in the series.

OCTOPUSSY still needs a decent release but is worth getting.

AVTAK is not my fave Bond film but Barry's score is one of the best ones he has done. The electric guitar used gives it a whole different feel from previous scores.

My vote is a toss-up between TND and TWINE. Both scores are structured extraordinarily well, and Arnold reminds us--in the very best tradition of Herrmann and Goldsmith--that A WHOLE LOT can be accomplished with very little. AS an aside, I also really like the quality of composition in the last two excursions as well. But most importantly, Arnold's music *functions* well in the last two outings (if it was undermixed in TND). The music is consistent and Arnold develops material, giving a strong storytelling component to both of his scores--a component that helps the audience build a better relationship with the picture, if even subconsciously so.

Although it is the shortest of them all, it is the moodiest...

it is very nice, indeed. They talk with every composer of each Bond film, and they're all so cordial.