Adele — Skyfall

Adele's James Bond theme is broadly charting today, tracked across 138 country and platform charts after a brief dormancy. Written with Paul Epworth for the 23rd Bond film, Skyfall was released on Global James Bond Day in October 2012, marking the franchise's 50th anniversary, and won Adele the Academy Award for Best Original Song — a first for a Bond theme, per Tunefind. Its architecture is deliberately larger than her album work: Thomas Newman–style orchestration, a slow-building minor-key dread, vocals that climb from a whisper to a full brass-backed swell. The song sits apart in her catalog as the moment she scaled her soul-ballad instincts to cinematic proportions. Its return today follows renewed attention on the singer, recently spotted at the British Grand Prix, according to Newsner.