The Top Ten Songs by Led Zeppelin

Just a really fun song. I could have put “Fool in the Rain” or “D’yer Maker” on this list but “Misty Mountain Hop” is a little more rough and tumble, and ragged on the edges. I remember some show where Henry Rollins was going off on Zeppelin songs like “Fool” and “All My Love”, but I just didn’t get it. You can’t rip a band just because they try different stuff, can you? I thought so. You should have known better Mr. Rollins (though, he was right on about U2, in my opinion).

9. Over the Hills and Far Away

There are two songs on this list that I feel epitomize the soft-loud dynamic that most people wrongly credit Nirvana with perfecting, “Over the Hills and Far Away” and the No.2 song. “Over the Hills and Far Away” is also notable for me because, for some reason, I constantly played music with people who loved riffing on this song, and on more than one occasion we launched into horrific, unrehearsed live versions.

8. Whole Lotta Love

When I was a kid, my older brother would play me Zeppelin, and only now have I figured out why they struck such a chord with me (and every other American male perhaps). The “noise part” in “Whole Lotta Love” scared the living shit of me, in the best possible way. I called it the chainsaw massacre part (because I thought Jimmy Page’s guitar sounded like chainsaw ripping people to shreds). I was drawn to it the same way those fools at Jamestown were drawn to the Kool Aid, only I’m still breathing and better for it.

7. In the Light

This is my wildcard selection. I challenge you to find another Top Ten Led Zeppelin list with “In the Light” on it. Go on, do it. Maybe “In the Evening” (maybe), but not “In the Light”. For my money, it doesn’t get any better than John Paul Jones’ work on the EMS synthesizer in this song, and I realize how sacrilegious that sounds.

6. The Immigrant Song

I have to admit, I loved ‘Led Zeppelin 3’ when I was a teenager. It wasn’t until I was much older when I “realized” that this record was a so-called “lesser” Zeppelin album. What? Come on, “Immigrant Song” alone makes ‘3’ a classic. My band tried to play this live, but we didn’t have a guitar player and the bass player couldn’t figure out JPJ’s part. The Lesson: We sucked and John Paul Jones was a very underrated musician.

5. Ramble On

Who doesn’t love a good rock song based on Tolkien literature? I am not a fan of ‘Lord of the Rings’ and I sometimes try to overlook the fact that Robert Plant was such a huge hobbit nut (if you think about it, doesn’t Plant look like a giant hobbit?). But, lyrics aside, this song is simply awesome. It’s gets a 99 on the “Punch in the face when the chorus hits” Scale.

4. Stairway to Heaven

Obligatory.

3. When the Levees Break

I had the great fortune of discovering this song in two different ways at roughly the same time. In high school, as I dug into all the music that had been created either before I was born or when I was too young to appreciate it, certain strange and coincidental things are bound to happen. Like when I heard “When the Levees Break” and ‘Licensed to Ill’ (Beastie Boys) at about the same time. The Beastie Boys sampled “Levees” on their opening track, the great “Rhymin’ and Stealin'”. It was like some kooky 2-for-1 special and, while I’m sure it seems pretty mundane now, recognizing it when I was 15 was like curing cancer. (ON A SIDE NOTE: Would it have been in poor taste or totally appropriate if Spike Lee had included this song on his documentary of same name?)

2. What Is and What Should Never Be

Although, as I’ve gotten older, Zeppelin continues to steadily decline as far as my musical tastes go, there will always be a couple of songs for which my love will never waiver. This is one of those songs. It’s at once psychedelic and rocking yet completely mysterious and undefinable. Also, I guess, if you wanted to make a statement like, “out of Led Zeppelin’s entire catalogue, there is not a more prototypically ‘Zeppelin’ song in terms of blending their unique cohesion of styles into a single piece than “What Is and What Should Never Be”,” then you could make it now.

1. Good Times, Bad Times

“In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man,” so says Led Zeppelin, eternal Kings of Hard Rock. That lyric says so much about this band. They, perhaps unintentionally so, paraphrased the entire Led Zeppelin experience for American males in one sentence.