18/10/2026
David Arnold’s original 1997 score to Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) 💥📰📱🚙👩🏻🏍️ takes week 129 of the work playlist📱, specifically 📰 Track 14: “Surrender” composed by Arnold and David McAlmont, with lyrics by Don Black, and performed by k.d. lang.
Originally intended to be the film’s opening song, this ballad in the true Bond style opens bombastically with drums, tambourines, hi-hats, and bass guitar, before raucous jazz trombones step in, picking up the action theme that Arnold uses throughout the film’s score.
Lighter drums, the bass guitar, and violins allow k.d. lang to lay out the verse, although trumpets maintain the tongue-in-cheek sizzle, whilst synthesisers echo the tune to remind us that this is 1990s Bond. Nevertheless, k.d. lang perfectly delivers a song worthy of great Bond artists like Dame Shirley Bassey, Sir Tom Jones, Lulu, The Pretenders, Gladys Knight, and Tina Turner.
It is a satisfying amalgamation of the film’s characters and themes, referring to control through news, stories, and print, without losing the film’s romanticism.
Despite the song’s title, it makes optimum use of the lyrics “Tomorrow Never Dies”, the title change being prompted by the decision to use Sheryl Crow’s song over the film’s opening titles instead.
Like a knowing wink to the audience, hi-hats and electric guitar act as a counterpoint to the raucous trombones, whilst the romantic use of strings returns from James Bond’s (Pierce Brosnan’s) and Colonel Wai Lin’s (Michelle Yeoh’s) search for the stealth ship.
k.d. lang then sings about truth and having “taken care of yesterday”, before the lower-pitched drums, tambourines, and strings propel her into the final chorus, where she faces off against the orchestra, especially the trombones. Harking back to Bassey’s “Goldfinger” and Jones’s “Thunderball”, k.d. lang holds the final note of the word “dies” after belting out the film’s title three times.
The trombones, drums, tambourines, and synthesisers gradually fade out long after k.d. lang has given that final note.
Should a Bond film’s strongest song come at the beginning or end of the film?
