number of acts, ranging from Nancy Sinatra and Tom Jones, to Shirley Bassey and Wings, had recorded the themes to James Bond movies. But as of 1977, nobody did it better than Carly Simon, who took her theme for The Spy Who Loved Me to #2.

Carly, the daughter of Simon & Schuster founder Richard L. Simon, broke into the music business with her sister Lucy. As The Simon Sisters, they reached #73 in 1964 with the sing "Winkin', Blinkin' And Nod." When Lucy got married, Carly moved to Europe for a year.

First charting on Aug. 27, 1977, "Nobody Does It Better" was New York City born pop vocalist/ songwriter Carly Simon's eighth Top 40 hit and fourth Top 10 single. It appeared on the 1977 James Bond soundtrack Spy Who Loved Me, also first charting on Aug. 27, 1977, rising to No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 200 and remaining on the chart for 16 weeks.

After meeting up with Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan's manager, Carly soon signed to Elektra Records and scored a #10 hit her first time out with "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," which helped her earn a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. The following year, she topped the charts with "You're So Vain," shortly after marrying James Taylor. Taylor helped Simon achieve another Top 10 hit with their #10 duet "Mockingbird," but by the middle of the decade, her hit streak had faded. A spy named Bond gave er career the shot in the arm it needed.

 Written by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, "Nobody Does It Better" marked a change from the previous Bond themes in that it wasn't titled after the film, although the movie's title did sneak into the lyrics. The tune also marked the beginning of a songwriting collaboration that soon turned personal. In his autobiography, The Way I Was, Marvin Hamlisch explained, "They wanted a hit title song, and they recommended the 'hot new' lyricist in town, Carole Bayer Sager. We met in my apartment.... Carole had brought me into the world of rock & roll. No sooner had we written 'Nobody Does It Better,' sung by Carly Simon, than it climbed to number two on the charts and was nominated for an Academy Award.... It was time that Bond be pretentious enough and vain enough to have a song written about him."

Entering the charts at #83 "Nobody Does It Better" took 14 weeks to reach the runner-up position, where it stayed for three weeks (behind Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life"). The song earned a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year, along with a nomination for Best Female Pop Performance for Simon. However, both nominations ended with losses to Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen (Love Theme From A Star Is Born)." "Nobody Does It Better" remained tied with Paul McCartney & Wings' "Live and Let Die" as the best-charting Bond theme ever in the U.S. until Duran Duran took "A View To A Kill" to #1 in 1985. Because of Simon's success with the theme from The Spy Who Loved Me, one of her later albums in 1979 was appropriately titled Spy. But not many people loved the album, and it became her lowest-charting album since her 1971 debut album.

Marvin Hamlisch went on to have more success with the scores for Ordinary People (1980) and Sophie's Choice (1982). He also received an Academy Award nomination in 1986 for the film version of A Chorus Line. One of a handful of people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, a feat dubbed the "EGOT," he died on Aug. 6, 2012, in Los Angeles of respiratory arrest, among other contributing factors. He was 68. The Associated Press described him as having written "some of the best-loved and most enduring songs and scores in movie history."

- Christopher G. Feldman, The Billboard Book of No. 2 Singles, Billboard, 2000.

 

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