he music of Good Omens starts, about 30 years ago with a joke. Actually, it’s a joke that predated

the book: Terry Pratchett and I decided that the reason we had cassettes of Queen’s Greatest Hits in our cars that we didn’t remember buying was because all music transforms into the best of Queen. We also knew this wasn’t true: in 1987, in a motorway service station, in the small hours of the morning, you’d buy a cassette to keep you awake when you drove, and stare sadly at things you didn’t want to listen to, and you’d buy Queen’s Greatest Hits and forget that you’d bought it. We had American friends who had the same relationship with the Best of Bruce Springsteen. Which meant that Queen was going to be important to Good Omens.

avid Arnold has a 14 inch model of Freddie Mercury on his desk. There

may have been other composers equally as qualified to make Good Omens music, but I do not know who they are or could possibly be. Director Douglas Mackinnon and I had a conversation with each of the people involved with Good Omens. It went, “Look, what we want to see and hear are the ideas that you’d feel the need to apologetically explain that ‘This may be a bit too mad but...’

before you say them.” David grinned evilly when we told him this. The first composition we heard was the theme music. “This may be a bit mad...” he explained, as he played it to us. We’d never heard it before, but as soon as we heard it we’d always known it. It was the Good Omens music. Of course it was. We told David how much we loved it.

“Thank God for that!” he said. “I don’t have anything else.”

t was that way with all the music. Douglas and I would go to David Arnold’s lair.

We would play him the episode, talking about what was happening emotionally to the characters, trying to find the emotional heart of each scene. We didn’t tell him what to do or what to make, but the three of us watched and talked about what was honest. And then, some weeks later, we would go back to David’s haunted belfry room, with the 14 inch Freddie Mercury on the desk, and David would play us the episode, with music, and we would exult and delight and be joyful. Good Omens isn’t only one kind of thing. It contains many styles and many approaches, all sorts of sensibilities and scenes. It’s not just one thing. There’s

comedy in there, but there’s action and history and horror and satire and a number of other kinds of storytelling. David Arnold creates music that works, giving us a Crucifixion as beautifully sad as anything Hollywood has created, taking us blithely through six thousand years of human history to a blazing motorway and Armageddon.

he Queen music is powerful. And it’s funny. And David helped it to live in the

story. He even did something impossible with it at one point, taking us undetectably from the music of Thomas Tallis to We Will Rock You. David Arnold’s music is powerful, and it’s funny, and sometimes it’s moving and exciting, and sometimes it takes us somewhere new and sometimes it conjures up places and things we weren’t expecting, and sometimes it hurries us through scenes or slows things down so we can appreciate them. It’s another character. It never distracts us.

knew I wanted to finish with “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”

and I spent several days listening to cover versions, on Spotify and YouTube and on random websites, trying to find the version that felt in my heart like the one I heard in my

imagination, and failing miserably. It needed to go from cocktail lounge dinner piano into territory that was transcendent, and needed a pure voice to take us there. If the version I wanted didn’t exist, we would have to create it. I asked Tori Amos to come and watch a little of Good Omens, and when she did, asked if she would sing “A Nightingale Sang...” She did. She made something amazing, and then David Arnold took what Tori had done and added strings. It was a joke, and a way of illustrating a joke, and the first time I saw it, at the end of Episode Six, I found myself crying, because like the best jokes, it was perfectly serious and utterly heartfelt. David’s team made this real. Toby Pitman and Ben Foster, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the glorious strings.

hank you to Tori Amos and Mark Hawley, to David Arnold, and especially

to the model of Freddie Mercury on David’s desk, whom Douglas and I sometimes suspected was secretly masterminding the whole thing.

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Good Omens © Neil Gaiman : April 2019 all rights reserved

1:1 GOOD OMENS OPENING TITLE 1:2 CHATTERING NUNS 1:3 THREE CARD SWITCH 1:4 WARLOCK 1:5 ADAM1:6 LULLABY 1:7 HELL HOUND 1:8 WRONG BOY 1:9 WE’RE DOOMED 1:10 END TITLES - THE THEME THAT GOT LEFT IN THE CAR1:11 WITCH 1:12 NEWT 1:13 ANATHEMA 1:14 THE THEM 1:15 ANATHEMA MEETS THEM 1:16 PAINTBALL 1:17 ANATHEMA INVESTIGATES 1:18 SLEEPING ADAM 1:19 I SHOULD COCOA 1:20 CRUCIFIED 1:21 THE BLACK KNIGHT1:22 THE GLOBE 1:23 ST.JAMES PARK 1:24 HOLY WATER 1:25 ADAM AND DOG 1:26 WE’RE NOT KILLING ANYBODY1:27 ATLANTIS 1:28 GABRIEL 1:29 BAD ANGEL MICHAEL 1:30 DELIVERY FOR POLLUTION 1:31 MESSAGE FOR MR DEATH 1:32 ALIENS!

Volume : 1

AMBASSADOR ARRIVES

ANSAPHONE

ADAM ASCENDING

SHADWELL BREAKS IN

BOOKSHOPS ON FIRE

IS THAT YOU?

FOUR HORSEMEN

THUNDERGUN

ADAMS CHANGED

HORSEMEN TO THE AIRFIELD

ON YOUR BIKES

REQUIEM FOR A BENTLEY

THE GATHERING

DESPATCH THE HORSEMEN

COMPUTERS DOWN

END OF THIS STORY

INEFFABLE PLAN

THEY’VE TOLD HIS FATHER

ANOTHER PLACE

LIFE AFTER DEATH

ADAMS BEDROOM

RESTORATION

NEWT AND ANATHEMA WAKE UP

HELL AND HOLY WATER

LAWYER WITH A BOX

SHADWELL AND TRACY

TOGETHER

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS

ALL CHANGE

A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE

Performed by TORI AMOS

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Volume : 2

Credits

Based on the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Written by Showrunner: Neil Gaiman

Directed by: Douglas Mackinnon

Executive Producers: Chris Sussman, Rob Wilkins, Neil Gaiman, Simon Winstone, Douglas Mackinnon

Produced by Amazon Studios, BBC Studios, The Blank Corporation and Narrativia

Music by David Arnold

Orchestrated and conducted by Ben Foster additional orchestrations by Nicholas Dodd additional music by Ben Foster

Recorded and mixed by Nick Wollage and Adam Miller at Air Studios, London

String Contractor: Susie Gillis for Isobel Griffiths Ltd.

Choir: Crouch End Festival Chorus, under the musical direction of David Temple

Music Prep. by Sam Thompson assisted by Jon Sims

Mastered by John Webber at Air Mastering , London

Programming, Guitars, Bass and Shredding Toby Pitman

Featured Musicians :

Electric Violin, Boy Soprano, Whistling Eos Counsell

Electric Cello Peter Gregson

Sax Ben Castle

Chromatic Harmonica Mark Kermode

Guitars, keys, bass, recorders, singing and lots of weird things that needed hitting or blowing into David Arnold

String Players :

Violins : Tom Pigott-Smith (Orchestra Leader) Emlyn Singleton, Jackie Shave, Steve Morris, Richard George, Warren Zielinski, Eos Counsell, Patrick Kiernan, Laura Melhuish, Nina Foster, Jackie Hartley, Kate Robinson, Dai Emanuel, Tom Kemp and Sonia Slany

Violas : Bruce White, Rachel Robson, Peter Lale and Laurie Anderson

Celli : Caroline Dale, Vicky Matthews, Nick Cooper, Frank Schaefer and Peter Gregson

Double Bass : Mary Scully and Richard Pryce

A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square :

Performed and produced by Tori Amos

Recorded and mixed by Mark Hawley and Marcel van Limbeek at Martian Engineering , Cornwall, UK

Strings arranged by David Arnold and Nicholas Dodd, recorded at Air Studios London

Mastered by Jon Astley at Close To The Edge

Album produced by David Arnold

Album mastered by John Webber at AIR Mastering

Executive producers for Silva Screen Records Ltd. Reynold D’Silva and David Stoner

Design layout Stuart Ford

All titles published by Bucks Music Publishing / BBC Studios Distribution

except “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square”

Music by Manning Sherwin / Lyrics by Eric Maschwitz

Published by Peter Maurice Music

Ⓟ & © 2019 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd . Under exclusive l icence to Silva Screen Records Ltd . All Rights Reser ved . SILCD1593 MCPS