Yesterday, as part of my preparations for hosting trivia, I worked out Adele and Paul Epworth's "Skyfall" on the piano (just through the first chrous), and was charmed by how cleverly Bond-y it is, a thread: 1/

First things first, it starts with that horn and low string kind of subito piano crescendo thing. It's an orchestration that has Bond written all over it, but it's the chord that really sells it, it's a minor chord with a major seventh and ninth on top. It's THE Bond chord. 2/

It's a chord that appears at the ends of both the music that underscores the opening "gun barrel sequence" of every movie and the main James Bond theme, but it's since taken on a life of its own as a more general spy chord. That's no coincidence. 3/

It's an inherently ambiguous chord, featuring elements that don't naturally occur together in the diatonic scale. It is somehow both major and minor, featuring a leading tone that would somehow lead to the very chord you're already listening to. 4/

Indeed, one way to conceptualize the chord is to play a minor triad, and then build a major triad on the fifth of that first chord. Its the tonic AND the dominant. That is, it has all of the tension (and all of the release) of tonal music in one chord. 5/

That's a great fit for spying -- whether the ambiguity reflects the changing identities of a spy in disguise, or the moral flexibility of someone with a license to kill. It's a distinctive chord that holds a lot of tension within it, but doesn't point to anywhere else. 6/

I could probably dissect that chord all day, but this thread is supposed to be about "Skyfall," so I'll move on for now. But keep that ambiguity and major/minor tension in mind as we move forward -- it's a bit of a motif. 7/

Then the piano comes in for a bit of an intro. It stays in the key of that opening chord (c minor). There's an ostinato in the right hand of C and Eb, while the bass suggests some harmonic motion. We might hear it at this point as i-VI-IV7... 8/