Five-time Academy Award winner John Barry died of a heart attack in New York earlier today. The composer was aged 77. While most of Barry’s awards came elsewhere, the work that made him a household name for movie-goers would invariably be his arrangement of Monty Norman‘s base tune for eleven movies of the James Bond series. To me the one he recorded for You Only Live Twice with Nancy Sinatra remains the best of the lot, the haunting strings motif of which was later incorporated beautifully by Robbie Williams in his hit single Millennium. As a tribute to the veteran composer, here is a youtube playlist of 41 of his greatest hits. RIP, John Barry.
