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One of my favorite bands, Camel, is relatively obscure, at least compared to Britney Shania Mariah Lavigne Aguilera, which is a big fucking crime when you stop to think about it.

Anyway, Camel’s landmark 1974 release Mirage, which I’ve mentioned before because its (arguably) best song is the last one on the album, contains a track that was inspired by the writing of Tolkien. The song title is “Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider.”

Led Zeppelin is another band that found inspiration in Tolkien. I got to thinking that there must be dozens of artists who have written songs in this vein. And I got to thinking that maybe I should compile a list.

This being the Web, somebody already has. Google being Google, finding the list took 0.19 seconds. Here it is: The Tolkien Music List.

The purpose of this site is to provide an exhaustive discography of musical works inspired by or referential to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth (the world of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion).

The influence of Tolkien’s mythology on art and popular culture is far-reaching, and music is no exception. Thus far, a total of 759 artists (boasting over a thousand musical works) have been documented and assembled on this list.

759 artists?! I’m glad I didn’t start the list. I couldn’t sustain my interest in the topic for 759 artists. I’m having trouble sustaining my interest even long enough to finish this article. I hope you’re doing better than I am.

I skimmed through the 759 artists. How many had I heard of? Were there unremembered, hidden pockets of Middle Earth in my CD collection?

About a dozen of the bands were familiar, at least in name. Many of the rest seem to be obscure — and I don’t mean “obscure” in the sense that Camel is obscure, but obscure in the sense that JAR is obscure, i.e., some of those bands would seem to have about as many fans as JAR did, which at last count was 10.

I found two surprises: Rush and Styx. How did I not think of Rush? I have nearly their entire discography on my shelf and I never made the connection.

Two bands surprised me by not appearing in the list: Genesis and Marillion. Marillion is an odd exception, in that they named the band after a Tolkien book, but managed not to write any songs about it.