Tomorrow Never Dies Original Score

The adventures of MI6 007 agent James Bond form the basis of one of the longer lasting franchises in movie history, which has survived a revolving door of actors in the lead role, including Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. While the James Bond theme remains basically the same for each feature, only suffering a few variations of the original version written by Monty Norman, every subsequent installment has its own original film score and soundtrack. In the case of 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies (TND), the movie score was composed by David Arnold, a British composer whose credits include the music of the films Stargate, and Independence Day.

Arnold came to the producers' attention through the album 'Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project,' which included new versions of classic Bond themes such as Diamonds are Forever, Nobody Does it Better, Live and Let Die, and We Have All the Time in the World, by artists like Pulp, Chrissie Hynde, Iggy Pop and The Propellerheads. This last band was chosen by Arnold to set the car chase scene in TND to their song Backseat Driver. The rest of the film score mixes techno music with more classical Bond undertones, drawn from the film From Russia with Love.

Despite, or maybe precisely because, there have been so many Bond movies, every one has to have a unique identity, and a great part of that identity is the official theme for each particular film. In this case, the responsibility fell on the more than capable hands of American singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, known up until then for hits like All I Wanna Do, Strong Enough, If it Makes You Happy, and Every Day is a Winding Road. As is usual, the song shares the same name with the movie, and plays over the opening credits.