Collected Thoughts

Well, there may not be "rules", but there are certainly things to consider in choosing a song. The era of the source, the voice (both actual and linguistic) of the singer, the rhythm of the song (some rhythms work better for some sources; the reason I used the ska version of Invisible Sun rather than the original is that the rhythm worked better, also it was more nearly contemporary with the film), the complexity of the song, the musical influences on the song, the "size" of the song, the movement within the song (both musically and lyrically), the clarity of the lyrics (to an extent, and this has become less important over the last five years)and others that I'm not coming up with now.

The era of the source: well I think that there is some real flexibility with that in ROTK, but because it has a medieval feel that's going to be the era that you're either reflecting or departing from. This song departs from it, if less radically than some song choices I've heard.

The voice of the singer doesn't work for me; he's too young both physically and emotionally. The vocabulary of the song writer which sounds like a slightly whiny twenty-something in the last dozen years. Also, with LoTR I think it is hard to bring in any song with a direct reference, especially repeated, to God (and if it mentions' Christ anywhere, the song is doomed for LoTR. Narnia will be a very different story on this point).

LOTR is a very complex world and the character relationships are complex. This song isn't, not in the music (single very straight-forward guitar), not in the language (the shape of they lyrics and the word choice are both very simple which plays against Tolkien's use of language). Related to this is the size of the song. I wish I had a better term for it, but as the movie is epic there's a desire for the song to be similarly scaled. Movies often need bigger songs and TV shows often can't handle them. Queen, as rule, really shouldn't be used for TV shows . The clarity of the lyrics wasn't an issue in this case, for which I'm glad since it made the narrative clearer to be able to identify the "I" and "you" for each verse.