If I'm ever in a funk so deep I can't dig myself out by music alone, I start up The Two Towers at the point where Aragorn asks Theodeon to ride out and meet the Uruks. Where Gimli points out that the sun is rising. And watching Gandalf and Eomer race down that mountain, with Ben del Maestro's vocals and the horses' hooves and the sunlight and then the cut to Isengard, when the river is undammed -- I just -- it sings.

Howard Shore's score is one of the greatest motion picture soundtracks ever recorded. "The Bridge of Khazad-dum" gets me every time; all those "Gandalf riding forth" themes are heart-stopping; Renee Fleming as the voice of the ring at Mt. Doom, and the eagles -- I'm not a fan of the books, but the movies, the movies, oh.

It does not compute at all that it's been almost six years since Fellowship came out.