Last night’s Academy Awards ceremony highlighted Hollywood’s best and brightest. It gave viewers a chance to celebrate the world’s most famous actors and actresses – as well as some of the greatest voices ever to grace the silver screen.
Shirley Bassey, the famous voice behind the James Bond title hit, Goldfinger, may have stolen the show, however. At the age of 76, Bassey belted out the tune as if she were at the peak of her career. Her Oscar performance garnered a standing ovation and had viewers almost forgetting the fact that none of the James Bond actors were featured for the film series’ 50th anniversary.
“If British spy James Bond can’t be called upon to save the mishandling of pop music by the 2013 Oscars, producers did at least book the next best thing: Shirley Bassey,” explained an editor at the Los Angeles Times. “The vocalist, now in her 70s, has defined what has now become a genre, Bond music.”
Bassey, who initially found her fame in the 1950s, left a decades-long impression on movie-goers when recording the theme songs for Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever and Moonraker.
Born in Wales in 1937, Bassey has been singing since she was a teenager. In fact, she’s been singing her entire life. In 2008, the song Goldfinger was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame while she, herself, has received numerous awards, including Most Successful British Female Singer by the Guinness Book of Records, Outstanding Contribution to Music by the National Music Awards U.K. and Best Female Singer by TV Times.
