Sam Smith's new single “Writing's on the Wall” is the worst James Bond theme ever written. I don't care if it hit number one on the U.K. charts. I don't care if Rolling Stone called it “elegant,” “sumptuous,” and “a grand accomplishment.” I don't care that it has to beat out Madonna's “Die Another Day:” and a-ha's “The Living Daylights” for the title. It's true that it's not actively cringeworthy, but that's not why it sits at the bottom of the heap. It is the anti-earworm; I have heard the song half a dozen times now and cannot recall a single note of it.

But I have been looking forward to seeing Spectre for weeks now – let's just say I have a thing for Christopher Waltz – and so, instead of Smith's meandering melody-less mess of a theme, I have Adele's “Skyfall,” from the previous Bond movie of the same name, running through my head.

I didn't like “Skyfall,” either, when I first heard it. It felt too mannered, too stately, too stiff. Adele's voice was wonderful as always, but it lacked the passion that sells her best material. It was pretty enough to win an Oscar but it felt more like a formal exercise in retro Bond material than anything else.

I take it all back.

“Skyfall” has grown on me. Sure, it can't compare to the splendor of Dame Shirley Bassey's “Goldfinger.” But I've come to admire its optimism. “Let the sky fall, when it crumbles, we will stand tall,” Adele sings. It's a solid you-and-me-against-the-world song, a song about finding that thin ray of hope in the midst of the world's darkness. I can work with that. Adele's been widely praised for her songwriting abilities, but sometimes it all just comes off too sappy for my taste. I overlook it because I don't care what she's saying as long as she sings it. In the case of “Skyfall,” it's actually refreshing to hear a measure of emotional distance in the work – to hear her refuse to fall apart (for once). She lets the strings and the stately tempo prop her up. She's not needy here, she's indomitable. This song is about strapping on her emotional armor and getting on with it. “Keep Calm and Sing a Bond Theme,” as it were.

Which is another reason why Sam Smith's approach to writing an 007 theme ultimately falls flat. The British crooner says he imagined “Writing's on the Wall” as a sort of diary entry in the character of Bond. But let's face it: James Bond has neither the time nor the inclination for maudlin self-reflection. His emotional detachment is not merely a job requirement but part of what makes the character so dangerously attractive. To turn him into just another journal-scribbler is to entirely miss the point.

I'm still not entirely in love with “Skyfall” the song. It's good but not great; it gets the job done but it neither transcends the form nor forges new depths for it. It's a little one-dimensional. But as a Bond-themed earworm, it works nicely. In the bathroom after the movie, I overheard a woman complaining about Spectre. “I hated it,” she said, and admitted she fell asleep in the middle. “And it's so disappointing because I love James Bond.” I have a sneaking suspicion that when she says “I love James Bond” she really meant “I love Daniel Craig” – the franchise, after all, is almost a decade old by now. For me, Spectre was solid but not spectacular. It was neither the best of this era's Bond movies nor the worst, and, like “Skyfall” the song, it may yet grow on me.