"The World Is Not Enough" is the theme song for the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, performed by American rock band Garbage. The song was written by composer David Arnold (who also scored the film) and lyricist Don Black, previously responsible for four other Bond songs, and was produced by Garbage and Arnold. "The World Is Not Enough" was composed in the style of the series' title songs, in contrast with the post-modern production and genre-hopping of Garbage's first two albums Garbage (1995) and Version 2.0 (1998). The group recorded most of "The World Is Not Enough" while on the Version 2.0 World Tour in Europe in support of their album Version 2.0, telephoning Arnold as he recorded the orchestral backing in London before travelling to England. Garbage later finished recording and mixing the song at Armoury Studios in Canada. The lyrics reflect the film's plot told from the viewpoint of antagonist Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), with themes of world domination and seduction.
The song and its accompanying soundtrack were released internationally by Radioactive Records when the film premiered worldwide at the end of November 1999. "The World Is Not Enough" was praised by reviewers; it reached the top 40 of ten singles charts and the top 10 of four. It was included on the 2008 re-release of the James Bond compilation The Best of Bond... James Bond, Garbage's 2007 greatest hits album, Absolute Garbage, and Garbage's 2022 greatest hits album Anthology.
Development
Background In September 1998 Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, owners of Eon Productions and long-time producers of James Bond films, chose David Arnold to compose the score for the nineteenth Bond movie The World Is Not Enough (scheduled for release in November of the following year). Arnold composed the score for Tomorrow Never Dies, the previous film in 1997, and oversaw the recording of Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project (an album of cover versions recorded by contemporary artists including Pulp, Aimee Mann and David McAlmont) that same year. Arnold and the film's production team wanted an early rough draft of the song so elements of its melody could be incorporated into the main score. Director Michael Apted thought the use of Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" as a love theme throughout The Spy Who Loved Me very effective, and he wanted Arnold to use that as a reference point.
Composition Arnold wanted a theme song marrying the "classic Bond sound" with the electronica that would influence most of his score. An orchestra would be required as audiences expect traditional elements in a Bond film, and without them The World Is Not Enough would be seen as a generic action movie. Getting the balance right might be a "poisoned chalice", since the results could sound too much or too little like a Bond theme. Arnold collaborated with lyricist Don Black on the song. Black, with 30 years of experience writing Bond themes, wrote the lyrics to Tom Jones's "Thunderball", Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever", Lulu's "The Man with the Golden Gun" and k.d. lang's closing credits theme, "Surrender", from Tomorrow Never Dies. Arnold and Black met several times to discuss lyrics for "The World Is Not Enough", also collaborating by phone, fax and email. According to Arnold, he "strung some la-las together, and all of a sudden the [song] came to life". By the end of 1998 he and Black finished the music and lyrics, except for the bridge (a contrasting section of about eight bars).
The lyrics are from the viewpoint of Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), the Bond girl revealed as the mastermind of the villainous scheme. Its underlying themes are seduction and domination, described by Arnold as "a steel fist in a velvet glove. It beckons you in with its crooked finger." Black added that although the lyrics reflected the film's plot, they were "of course all about world domination" and "a lot more personal and intense", evoking a "ballady and dramatic" mood. A line of dialogue from the film, "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive," was included in the lyrics.
By the first week of January 1999, Arnold completed the song's outline and made a synthesizer-arranged demo recording in his recording studio. He played the demo for Wilson, Broccoli and Apted, who were "extremely pleased" with the results. Arnold's agent then presented the demo to MGM executives in Los Angeles, who initially disliked it because it was a ballad and they expected a more uptempo song. MGM asked Arnold to rewrite a three-note sequence considered too similar to a motif in earlier Bond themes.
That month Arnold offered the theme to Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson, who was very enthusiastic; Arnold said he "never heard someone screaming down the phone". A week later he sent the band the rough demo, which they approved. Manson requested a small change in the lyrics, disliking the line "I know when to kiss and I know when to kill", so Arnold and Black changed "I" to "we" for the final version.
Garbage drummer and co-producer Butch Vig said that when the group contributed to film soundtracks, "one of our fantasies would be to do the Bond theme or do the new Bond song." Manson called herself a fan of the series, "an institution I admire and has always captured my imagination since I was a child", and the films had a "sensibility quite similar to how we approach making music". The chance to record a Bond theme appealed to her because "you know it's going down in movie history", and coming from Scotland, like original James Bond Sean Connery, "that's very close and inherent in our culture. It's not Bond if it's not Scottish!" The singer considered Garbage's music and the series' concepts "something that you can enjoy on the surface, but underneath there are lots of conflicting themes you can get into."
At the beginning of August Garbage's involvement was confirmed in a press release from MGM and Radioactive Records, Shirley Manson's record label, which would release the soundtrack and the single. Although Music Week reported that Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams, Sharleen Spiteri, Björk and Melanie C were rejected by the producers before Garbage was chosen, Arnold denied that the other artists had auditioned; the single was suitable only for a film, and was not created with a particular artist in mind.
Recording
The first recordings were made during the European leg of Garbage's Version 2.0 World Tour. After listening to the orchestral demo, the band worked on the key and tempo. Garbage used a portable studio from a number of European cities to record material for Arnold, keeping in touch by phone as he produced the song's string arrangement in London. Since the strings carried the structure of the song, they had to be finalised and recorded before Manson could sing her parts. Arnold recorded the strings with a 60-piece orchestra in one day at London's Metropolis Studios.
Garbage flew to London for a day to record the basic tracks, laying down electric guitar, bass guitar and Manson's vocals with the orchestra. Manson called working with the orchestra "exhilarating". That night, the band flew to Switzerland to resume their tour for three weeks.
The final recording was made in August at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, Canada, where Garbage built upon their first mix of the song, adding and subtracting parts, and completed final recording and mixing. The band kept the arrangement tight to preserve the song's dynamic, sweeping melody. "The orchestra took up so much space and really dictated where the song was going dynamically," keeping the recording simple, Vig recalled. "Besides the drums and bass and some percussive loops, there's a little bit of guitar that Duke and Steve did. There's not a lot of miscellaneous tracks on there. There's a few little ear-candy things that we did, but it's all meant to work around Shirley's singing." Although Garbage owned its own recording studio Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, for legal reasons the song could not be recorded in a U.S. studio. "The World Is Not Enough" was completed, mixed and mastered at the end of the month, and the group returned to their recording studio in Madison to record their mix of the song. Garbage's version (the "chilled-out remix") downplayed the classic Bond sound in favor of the band's style. Vig later said about the original recording, "We're pretty pleased with how it turned out. To Garbage fans, it sounds like a Garbage song. And to Bond fans, it's a Bond song." However, Manson noted that the version featured in the film "got our hopes and joys squashed," as "they had completely screwed with all the stems of mix and it sounded completely different."Parker, Lyndsey."Garbage's Shirley Manson remembers her see-through Grammy dress, 20 years later".Yahoo Music, February 6, 2019
Copyright infringement case Two songwriters, Frank P. Fogerty and Nathan Crow, sued Eon, MGM, Universal Music and Universal Studios for copyright infringement over "The World Is Not Enough", alleging that it derived from their song "This Game We Play", which was submitted to MGM executives in February 1999 for consideration for the soundtrack of The Thomas Crown Affair. Their claim centered on a four-note sequence in "The World Is Not Enough" which they alleged was identical to part of "This Game We Play". When the songwriters were gathering evidence, one posed as an employee of composer James Horner to contact Don Black and solicit his services for the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven. They recorded their conversation with Black, trying to get him to disclose when he and Arnold composed "The World Is Not Enough", and contacted Shirley Manson in a similar manner.
The case was argued in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in June 2004. The court rejected the plaintiffs' claim, concluding that Arnold independently composed "The World Is Not Enough" and it did not share a passage with "This Game We Play".Fogerty v. MGM: "The district court granted MGM's motion, concluding that Arnold had independently written the tune to the song...The district court also rejected plaintiffs' alternative claim that the two songs are strikingly similar...Plaintiffs claims were objectively unreasonable, the district court observed...and Plaintiffs offered no direct evidence to support one of the two basic elements of copyright infringement." The plaintiffs conceded that Arnold did not have access to "This Game We Play" after journal entries, delivery invoices, telephone and computer records, written declarations from Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and testimony from David Arnold, Don Black, Shirley Manson and Arnold's personal assistant provided "irrefutable evidence" that "The World Is Not Enough" had already been written and was not changed significantly—other than a lyrical alteration (the removal of one line to accommodate Shirley Manson) and an amendment to the score (the removal of the "three-note motif" to accommodate the MGM executives)—from the date that "This Game We Play" was submitted to MGM.
Music video The music video for "The World Is Not Enough" was directed by Philipp Stölzl for Oil Factory Films and filmed at Black Island Studios in London from September 23–24, 1999. Manson's android shots (the laboratory, kissing and driving scenes) were filmed on the first day, with the pyrotechnic scenes shot on the second. For her "death", Manson kissed a lookalike model. The University of London's Senate House was the exterior for the fictional New Globe Theatre in Chicago. Post-production and editing were completed two weeks later.