“A little incomplete”: Why Rita Coolidge was never sold on her 1983 career high
While remaining patient for a big break is perhaps the best way to approach a career in the arts, the fact that singer and songwriter Rita Coolidge hadn’t had this moment come her way until she was almost 40 must have been something of an anxious wait.
Born in 1945 and active in the music industry from the late 1960s, she hadn’t exactly been without moments of fortune earlier in her career, getting the opportunity to perform and contribute to many hits throughout the ‘70s that should have provided her with the necessary platform to blossom into one of the biggest stars of a generation.
That being said, two of her biggest moments, such as having come up with the idea for ‘Superstar’, a track that would become a hit for the Carpenters in 1971, and having produced a sketch that would later be used in the coda of Derek and the Dominos’ ‘Layla’, didn’t actually present her with any songwriting credits, and her work was largely overlooked during this early period.
Her work in the 1970s alongside husband Kris Kristofferson saw her gain a little more notoriety, with the duo earning two Grammy Awards in 1974 and ‘76 for ‘From the Bottle to the Bottom’ and ‘Lover Please’, but nothing that necessarily propelled her to considerably greater levels. This, along with the various other instances of maybes and close calls, must have ultimately left her wondering if her time in the limelight would ever come.
Things would all change rather unexpectedly when she found herself landing a career-defining opportunity in 1983 when she was asked to perform the theme song, ‘All Time High’, for the upcoming James Bond film, Octopussy. However, while undoubtedly a huge leap in the right direction in terms of gaining commercial attention, it would prove not to be as satisfying for her from an artistic point of view.
If her concerns up until this point were that she hadn’t made enough of an impression on audiences, then the fact that film producer Cubby Broccoli had chosen her specifically for the song at the behest of his daughter ought to have been enough of an indication that some people were taking note of her excellence as a vocalist.
However, when she was presented with the song, which had been composed by long-time Bond collaborator John Barry and lyricist Tim Rice, she noticed that there was something that didn’t quite feel right about the material she was working with, claiming, “Even after we did the record, the song felt a little incomplete.”
Coolidge may not have been totally enamoured with the song, which saw her singing from the perspective of the film’s titular love interest, but because of its association with the franchise, it ended up being a hit for her, landing her her second number one hit on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. That being said, it was the lowest-performing Bond theme to date, only reaching a high of number 34 on the Billboard chart, and not even breaking into the top 70 in the UK.
Perhaps the fact that the song was, as far as she was concerned, released in an unfinished state may have been one of the biggest reasons for its commercial disappointment. However, even to be given the blessing to record the theme song for one of the biggest film franchises in the history of cinema is the sort of high that most spend their whole lives chasing, giving Coolidge an ‘all-time high’, if you will.
