Lana Del Rey Is Finally on a James Bond Song, and It's for a Video Game

If you were to rattle off the non-negotiables of a proper James Bond theme song, these would include an atmosphere that is grand, moody, and melancholic and an otherworldly orchestral swell that sucks you into whatever cold and unfeeling mindset 007 constantly evokes.

Lana Del Rey, who is on our Mount Rushmore of most Bond-coded artists of all time, has been circling this orbit for years—she actually wrote the track "24" as her pitch for the theme to Spectre, which producers passed on in favor of Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall."

Her glamorous, spy-adjacent aesthetic and her innately cinematic musical sensibility paired with what a Bond theme requires are a match made in heaven that was always going to materialize eventually.

The singer finally got the gig when she dropped "First Light" as the theme song for the 007 video game of the same name, releasing next month.

It's crazy to think one of her most iconic early songs is literally about a guy who'd rather play video games than tend to her needs, and now she has one of her own.

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Lana Del Rey's "First Light"

The track, which sets the scene for the IO Interactive video game, sees Lana working with five-time Bond composer David Arnold with the right amount of secret agent-tinged mystique in the lyricism and the grand production.

"Run into the sun like it's the first light of day when you wake. Is it real or is it fake?," the singer croons in the verse.

The song then culminates in the chorus accompanied by brass orchestral swells over Lana singing, "Can't say I'm surprised to see you running towards the sun / like a moth to a flame / people try and stop you, all the fates just watch you / dying just to know whether you'll play your life like a game."

While it's cool to finally see Lana get a gig in the franchise, we think she still deserves to be on whatever reboot or sequel film Bond Incorporated has in the pipeline.

The singer is already a master at harnessing the distinct charm of the Swinging Sixties, the era in which the Bond franchise saw its genesis and penetrated pop culture in the decades that followed.

"First Light" does set an appropriate tone for a Bond product, though we didn't really see the diverse and nebulous instrumentation level out Lana's understated vocal performance—her singing oftentimes getting muffled and smothered under the cacophony.