Sam Smith Is Joining The Bondverse After All

After fueling speculation with a very telling Instagram post, Sam Smith has confirmed what we've all been guessing with varying levels of excitement. (You know, from unbelievably excited to impossibly excited.) Yes, that's right folks, Smith has recorded the new Bond theme for Spectre, called "Writing's On The Wall," and, as the singer confirmed on Tuesday, the song will be available for pre-order on iTunes starting midnight. As if you didn't already have ever reason to be excited about this, the 23-year-old has gone so far as to call the song "one of the highlights of my career," noting that he'll be "a part of this iconic British legacy and join an incredible line up of some of my biggest musical inspirations." Seriously, you can practically hear him jumping up and down in glee, but then I could hear him doing that after Smith's Bond-inspired Instagram post.

With no clues about the upcoming song aside from the title and the album cover — in which the singer stands in the middle of a spotlight gazing dramatically at something off-screen — fans of both the James Bond movies and of Smith's music are kind of left with nothing to do but sit on their laurels and wonder about the soon-to-be-hit. Will it be slow and sultry, like Adele's "Skyfall?" Will it be fast-paced and mysterious like Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger?" I literally can't handle the anticipation.

If we take the album cover as a hint, I'm already willing to place my money on the song being something slow and sultry. Not only is Adele a huge inspiration for Smith, but the album cover is simplistic in its black and white mysteriousness. Of course, I also don't think the song will just be more of Smith's usual, soulful, piano-based crooning. I mean, there will probably be a fair bit of that because Smith would want to leave his own unique finger print on the Bond mythos, but I also believe that he has customized this theme song not just to match his own aesthetic but to match Bond's.

Dare I hope for some jazz spicing up the soulful melody? Perhaps some drums to really bring the song to a crescendo? Will it turn out to be both the kind of song you can play in the background of Bond sneaking into this building or that party and the kind of song you can play in the background of Bond's numerous fights and struggles against the villains of the film? The sky is really the limit as far as Smith's musical talents, and musical possibilities, go.

And what does "Writing's On The Wall" tell us about the song? It's more than just the name of a Destiny's Child album, although it would be hilarious if that were in and of itself a clue. The well-known idiom implies evidence of an upcoming disaster that is hard, if not outright impossible, to avert. Because, after all, the writing's on the wall. Originally taken from the Book of Daniel, in which a disembodied hand writes a warning about the end of the Babylonian kingdom on the wall of the Babylonian palace, the phrase has since become a staple of pop culture as a portent of doom. Which means Smith's song does not spell anything good for Bond, not at all.

While we begin the wait to find out exactly what Smith is offering us as the new Bond theme, these speculations and predictions are pretty much all we have to keep us warm besides our own enthusiasm. At the end of the day, all we know about the song is that Smith considers it a career highlight — a high recommendation indeed. Here's hoping that "Writing's On The Wall" lives up to such praise.