Inside the Music of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ — And What to Expect on Season 2

For those working behind the scenes, Amazon’s sprawling, stunning and spendy fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is marked by a secrecy not unlike the clandestine creation of the titular gold bands in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy world.

“I would come [home] after working for 12 hours and my wife would go, ‘How’s it going?’ And I’d go, ‘The project is going okay,’” recalls composer Bear McCreary of the show’s first season. “My daughter was seven at the time — she would [have gone] to school and said it. The secrecy was crazy.”

The second season, which premieres on Prime Video on Aug. 29, was a similarly stealthy production. When woodwind and brass players gathered at London’s AIR Studios Lyndhurst (a deconsecrated Victorian church that producer George Martin turned into a top-notch recording facility in 1992) in late April to record part of its score, the TV show’s name was markedly absent from the sheet music.

“Even though there’s a code name, they know when they see my name and hear these tunes,” admits McCreary, an Elmer Bernstein-trained composer who writes every musical cue for the show (save Howard Shore’s opening theme). “It feels like coming back to school after a summer off and seeing all your friends.”

If Rings of Power were a high school, you’d probably peg McCreary – with his black t-shirt, trim beard and long, dark mane of hair – as a metal kid. And sure enough, just days after that recording session, the 45-year-old unleashed The Singularity, an expansive, hard-rocking concept LP, into the world. But before he fell in love with Queen and Guns N’ Roses, McCreary was a little boy obsessed with film soundtracks, especially those for epic fantasies.

Now, after scoring Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead and a number of video games, he’s creating one of his own with The Rings of Power. Only for season two, the stakes are higher — arguably, this is the pivotal season that will cement the fan response to this latest adaptation of Tolkien’s beloved world.

McCreary is easygoing while giving notes to the trumpet section or chatting with visiting cast member Markella Kavenagh (who plays Nori) at the recording space, but when the French horns and oboes kick in, he is battle ready. Considering that season two ups the action quotient, his body language is fitting. Not only does heroine Galadriel battle with archnemesis Sauron (“We’ve been waiting for this fight,” McCreary says), but a mysterious region of Tolkien’s Middle-earth will be shown for the first time.

“I felt an initial shock when I read the script and realized we were going to Rhûn,” he says. “Here is a part of the map that we’ve never seen in an adaptation before.” After “using every trick in the book” to score season one, McCreary sold showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay on an unusual idea: bring in a Bulgarian’s women’s choir to complement the arid desert setting. “They let me run with it, and I have to say, it sounds beautiful — haunting and strange.”

Adds Bob Bowen, worldwide head of music at Amazon MGM Studios: “[Bear’s] use of innovative musical approaches, combined with his deep understanding of Tolkien, provides a unique world-building for this series.”

Though McCreary’s dramatic, nuanced score fills the hexagonal, high-ceilinged AIR Studios with a tense grandeur, he’s aware that most viewers will experience it in an entirely different setting. With that in mind, he sometimes spins the Rings of Power mixes on his cellphone to ensure the most salient melodic elements come through clearly. “I want to make sure the show and score sounds good, even in a terrible listening environment.”

He’s also cognizant of social media responses to his score and was pleased when a few savvy fans figured out that his theme for Halbrand is the theme for the perfidious Sauron played backwards (Spoiler: the two were revealed to be one and the same in the season 1 finale). “I like to encode messages into the score,” says McCreary, who reveals that he’s burying the musical Easter eggs even deeper on season 2. “Now that I know people are digging, I can be even more subtle.”

The most rewarding fan response, however, has been at home. “My daughter has watched the show multiple times. She loved it,” he says, his tone growing as misty as the mountains of Moria. “I felt so proud that I could be part of the stories that bring my daughter into Middle-earth.”

A version of this story will appear in the Aug. 24 issue of Billboard.

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