Rings of Power/Tolkien and music

[eye_of_a_cat]

Peter Jackson's LOTR films were great and all, but my first ever Tolkien adaptation was the BBC radio drama from the early 1980s. My local library had it on cassette and I used to borrow it over and over and over again. One thing that did really really well, and that I missed from the film versions, was the use of Tolkien's songs - done not as background music but sung by the characters as part of the narrative. Here's Sam singing 'Gil-Galad Was An Elven King':

Watch on YouTube

So one of my absolute favourite moments in Rings of Power was Poppy (one of Sam's distant ancestors?) (I will CRY FOREVER if Smeagol/Gollum ends up being one of the harfoots we've met) sings this:

Watch on YouTube

It's not one of Tolkien's songs (although it lifts some words from his) but there's something wonderfully Tolkien-ish about the spirit of it, and it captures the feeling of those radio drama songs in a way I did not realise I had been missing.

Also also I am really loving some of the shippy fanmade music vids (I believe the youth of fandom call them 'edits' these days) that Rings of Power is producing. :

Watch on YouTube

and for a different approach, this one for what you can do with 20 seconds of a song.

Comments

[greenwoodside]

Haven't seen Rings of Power, but I also loved Stephen Oliver's music for the BBC LotR adaptation. I read somewhere that it wasn't Bill Nighy doing the actual singing for Sam's Gil-galad song, but Oz Clarke (the wine critic, formerly a professional singer) doing a brilliant imitation.

[eye_of_a_cat]

Oh I didn't know that! Brilliant.

[selenak]

The BBC radio series was my first adaption, too, and I loved it. As I did the way Rings of Power carried on the musical tradition. There are already various cover versions of Poppy's song online, would you believe it? Disa singing to the stones was another amazing moment. And of course that chillingly beautiful version of the Ring poem right at the end.

[eye_of_a_cat]

Oh I LOVED Disa singing to the stones! And the whole idea of 'resonating' by singing as part of mining anyway. It really gets that sense of a world stitched through by music.