The Living Daylights was the final Bond film to be scored by composer John Barry. The soundtrack is notable for its introduction of sequenced electronic rhythm tracks overdubbed with the orchestra—at the time, a relatively new innovation.

The title song of the film, “The Living Daylights”, was co-written with Pål Waaktaar of the Norwegian pop-music group A-ha and recorded by the band. The group and Barry did not collaborate well, resulting in two versions of the theme song. Barry’s film mix is heard on the soundtrack (and on A-ha’s later greatest hits album Headlines and Deadlines). The version preferred by the band can be heard on the 1988 A-ha album Stay on These Roads. However, in 2006 Paul Waaktaar-Savoy complimented Barry’s contributions: “I loved the stuff he added to the track, I mean it gave it this really cool string arrangement. That’s when for me it started to sound like a Bond thing”. The title song is one of the few 007 title songs that is not performed or written by a British or American performer.

In a departure from previous Bond films, The Living Daylights was the first to use different songs over the opening and end credits. The song heard over the end credits, “If There Was a Man”, was one of two songs performed for the film by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. The other song, “Where Has Everybody Gone”, is heard from Necros’s Walkman in the film. The Pretenders were originally considered to perform Daylights’ title song. However, the producers had been pleased with the commercial success of Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill”, and felt that A-ha would be more likely to make an impact on the charts.

The original soundtrack release was released on LP and CD by Warner Bros. and featured only 12 tracks. Later re-releases by Rykodisc and EMI added nine additional tracks, including alternate instrumental end credits music. Rykodisc’s version included the gunbarrel and opening sequence of the film as well as the jailbreak sequence, and the bombing of the bridge.

Additionally, the film featured a number of pieces of classical music, as the main Bond girl, Kara Milovy, is a cellist. Mozart’s 40th Symphony in G minor (1st movement) is performed by the orchestra at the Conservatoire in Bratislava when Koskov flees. As Moneypenny tells Bond, Kara is next to perform Alexander Borodin’s String Quartet in D major, and the finale to Act II of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (in Vienna) also features. Before Bond is drugged by Kara, she is practising the Cello solo from the first movement of Dvořák’s cello concerto in B minor. At the end of the film, Kara and an orchestra (conducted onscreen by John Barry) perform Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations to rapturous applause.