Rufus Wainwright has lent his voice to some timeless words over the years, from modern classics penned by Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell to the traditional songs on last year’s Folkocracy project. But he’s never before used those golden tones to sing about something quite as grand as The Lord of the Rings — until now.
The second season of Amazon’s splashy prequel series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power features Wainwright singing lead vocals on a song called “Old Tom Bombadil,” written by composer Bear McCreary. “I’m very, very choosy about what I choose to sing, and I was really happy with what Bear offered,” the singer-songwriter, 51, tells Rolling Stone.
As the title suggests, it’s a ballad about the character Tom Bombadil, who made a memorable appearance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original 1954 novel The Fellowship of the Ring but was cut from Peter Jackson’s 2001 film of the same name. In Season Two of The Rings of Power, he’s played by Rory Kinnear. Bombadil is an intriguing character in the novels, with a curiously lackadaisical attitude toward the ring that enthralls nearly everyone else in Middle-earth. He’s a figure of endless fascination for fantasy fans, and it’s a treat to hear Wainwright singing Tolkien’s words: “Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow/Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow…”
(You can hear the song — which is debuting exclusively on Amazon Music today, and will arrive on other streaming services tomorrow — right here.)
Wainwright read and liked the LOTR books as a teenager, though he admits he’s more of a Narnia person. “I enjoy all great sagas,” he says. “I’m a big opera fan, and my husband and I listen to Wagner a lot. I love to read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. I like anything that’s long and involved and complicated and keeps your attention away from this frightening planet.”
Since moving back to L.A. a few years ago, he’s gotten to know McCreary (“He’s come over to our house with his beautiful family a few times, and our daughters have hung out”), and when the composer asked him to sing about Tom Bombadil, he said yes right away.
“Bear briefed me on how this character that fans of the books are so enamored of is finally making his appearance, and he thought of my voice as an incarnation of that,” Wainwright says. “I’m very flattered. I understand it, too, in a way — because I am somewhat mysterious. Not everybody knows who Rufus Wainwright is, for better or for worse. So I think it’s a nice pairing.”
Reminded of the long tradition of folk and rock music inspired by Lord of the Rings, including at least three Led Zeppelin songs, Wainwright gives a nod to his friend Robert Plant: “He came to a Folkocracy show not too long ago, and he’s a big fan of my dad’s.”
For Wainwright, this song about Middle-earth’s ancient history fits into his recent work exploring folk music. “The whole idea of singing that way is that it’s something that you have to be able to sing a capella, surrounded with friends and family around a fire or something,” he says. “It has to have that kind of purity. You just go back into the spirit of your ancestors.”
Folkocracy was a success, garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album at this year’s awards. “I lost to Joni Mitchell, which is, I suppose, OK,” Wainwright quips. He’s currently getting ready to send that album off in high style with a show at New York’s Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29. “That’s the big goodbye for that project,” he adds.
Next, he’s working on bringing his Dream Requiem to Los Angeles for its U.S. premiere on May 4, 2025. “It’s this huge classical requiem piece, interwoven with some poetry by Byron,” says Wainwright, who’s eyeing “some very fun people” for the narrator role that Meryl Streep played at the Paris premiere earlier this summer. “I think I may have unfortunately written my masterpiece,” he adds with a laugh.
Blair Brown*
