Adele has been compared to everyone from Aretha Franklin to Etta James, but her real spiritual forbear may be Shirley Bassey, the brassy, leather-lunged, slightly schlocky Welsh songstress best known for belting out three James Bond theme songs, including the indelible "Goldfinger." So "Skyfall," the title song from the forthcoming 23rd Bond film, feels natural, inevitable: Adele is a born Bond Theme Girl, with the voice, and the flair for melodrama, that the job demands. Written by Adele and her "Rolling in the Deep" collaborator Paul Epworth, "Skyfall" sounds like the product of a computer algorithm, designed to produce the Platonically-ideal Bond theme. It has a slow-boiling tempo; a grandly arcing melody line; strings and brass that shiver, gust, and swoop; and a bombastic, romantic lyric ("Let the sky fall/When it crumbles/We will stand tall/Face it all together"). Adele sings magnificently, but the thing feels a bit too worshipful, not quite goofy enough. This is Bond – James Bond – we're talking about, the campiest screen hero in history. Adele and Epworth might have leavened their heart-on-sleeve with a bit more tongue-in-cheek.

“Satisfied”

Only the genius of Tom Waits could combine the subject of mortality, a reoccurring theme in his work, with wordplay that name checks both Mick and Keith, whom he calls "Mr. Jagger" and "Mr. Richards," and the title of their magnum opus, "Satisfaction." And to show just how cool Waits really is, he even got Mr. Richards to play along, one of nine guest appearances the guitarist has made on three Waits albums. "This growling roadhouse stomp is a late-breaking response to the Stones' greatest hit," Rolling Stone said of the track.