Soundtrack
The soundtrack for "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" has been called "perhaps the best score of the series." It was composed, arranged and conducted by John Barry; it was his fifth successive Bond film. Barry opted to use more electrical instruments and a more aggressive sound in the music – "I have to stick my oar in the musical area double strong to make the audience try and forget they don't have Sean ... to be Bondian beyond Bondian."
Barry felt it would be difficult to compose a theme song containing the title "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" unless it was written operatically, in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan. Leslie Bricusse had considered lyrics for the title song but director Peter R. Hunt allowed an instrumental title theme in the tradition of the first two Bond films. The theme was described as "one of the best title cuts, a wordless Moog-driven monster, suitable for skiing at breakneck speed or dancing with equal abandon."
Barry also composed the love song, "We Have All the Time in the World", with lyrics by Burt Bacharach's regular lyricist Hal David, sung by Louis Armstrong. It is heard during the Bond–Tracy courtship montage, bridging Draco's birthday party in Portugal and Bond's burglary of the Gebrüder Gumbold law office in Bern, Switzerland. It was Louis Armstrong's last recorded song as he died of a heart attack two years later. Barry recalled Armstrong was very ill, but recorded the song in one take. The song was re-released in 1994, achieving the number three position during a 13-week spell in the UK charts. A Hal David song entitled "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?" performed by Danish singer Nina also featured in the film in several scenes.
The theme, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", is used in the film as an action theme alternative to Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme", as with Barry's previous "007" themes. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was covered in 1997 by the British big beat group, the Propellerheads for the Shaken and Stirred album. Barry-orchestrator Nic Raine recorded an arrangement of the escape from Piz Gloria sequence and it was featured as a theme in the trailers for the 2004 Pixar animated film The Incredibles.
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