AURORA Grew Up on Tolkien. Now She Has Written a Song for Middle-earth

AURORA grew up reading Tolkien, and now she has helped write a song for Middle-earth. The Norwegian singer has joined Emmy-winning composer Bear McCreary on Morning Shall Come, a new original written for Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and released on 6 November.

Cover art for Morning Shall Come.

The books have been "such a huge part of my life" since childhood, she says, so adding to that ancient story is an honour. She wants the song to show the good that sits behind any evil, and the evil behind any good, and she calls working with McCreary and the team an adventure in itself.

McCreary wrote the lyrics with J.D. Payne, who runs the series, and the song is tied to the storyline of Galadriel and Celeborn, played by Morfydd Clark and Jamie Campbell Bower. A performance video, which begins at Sky Studios in London and finishes in the Rivendell treetops, premiered exclusively on Amazon Music, with a release on AURORA's YouTube channel to follow.

The song opens the Season 3 soundtrack, which arrives on digital and streaming services on Friday 13 November, the same day Mutant Records opens vinyl and CD preorders. An expanded digital collector's edition will follow later. Across 22 tracks, McCreary draws on choirs, folk instruments and the languages Tolkien invented, with guests including Bulgarian vocal group The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, Finland's male choir Mieskuoro Huutajat, Meshuggah's Jens Kidman and, from the cast, Sophia Nomvete and Morfydd Clark.

It is a busy year for AURORA. In September she marked ten years since her debut, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, by releasing The Moth Tapes: demos, alternative versions and the album's previously unreleased title track.