![]() All 8. 7 Led Zeppelin Songs, Ranked. It’s surprisingly easy to forget about Led Zeppelin in 2. With arena rock gradually fading from relevance, or at least being subverted and co- opted as a genre and idea — the closest thing to a stadium- geared blockbuster in the last year might have been One Direction’s Midnight Memories — Zeppelin’s enduring influence as the ideal of Big Rock Music is less relevant than ever. Even Almost Famous, the Zep- soaked Cameron Crowe flick that helped expose a new generation to the classic rock of their parents, is almost 1. The next time you hear “Stairway to Heaven,” it might actually sound interesting and refreshing — which is kinda cool, but just feels intuitively wrong. It takes an event like this year’s spate of deluxe Zeppelin reissues — the first three were released back in June, while IV and Houses of the Holy are on deck for next month — to remind you of how incredible this band really was. Some elements of the Zeppelin experience haven’t dated quite so brilliantly — namely the rampant misogyny, the even more rampant Tolkien references, and the always- terrible 1. Presence LP — but the songs, the sound, and the sheer size of the group continue to dazzle to this day. If they make music on this scale in 2. As a tribute to Led Zeppelin, we’ve ranked all 8. Any song to ever appear on a commercial Led Zeppelin release — even the live ones and the reissues — can be found here; for songs with multiple recorded versions, we opted for the best- known rendition. Enjoy our list, and next time you’re in your car or your shower, maybe give the local classic rock station a little love. Lists \ All 87 Led Zeppelin Songs, Ranked Every song ever recorded by Zep, listed from worst to first. Rainy weather on the east coast hasn’t stopped people from hitting the streets to march for science today. But the conditions in Antarctica and the Arctic Circle. Several of the experiments were actually quite successful; this cartoonish hoedown excursion was less so. Unfortunately, they’re followed by about 1. Robert Plant. 8. 1. Jimmy Page has essentially admitted the song was a total rewrite of III’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” and Plant sounds so bored with the rehash that he might fall asleep before the two- minute mark. Someone should’ve spell- checked that title, too. They were mostly right. Supremely silly, though there is some legitimate boogieing to be had, at least. Parts of it may have inspired the White Stripes’ “Icky Thump,” though you could say that about at least four or five Zeppelin songs. Stereophonic double- tracked guitars!) to get you through the near- five- minute runtime. If you were gonna afford the listening opportunity to one guy, though, Bonzo’s not a bad choice; if it were a minute or two shorter it’d be a great mixtape interlude. Not particularly long on hooks, but high on grit and short on runtime, so an enjoyable enough LZII outtake. Not interesting for a ton else. There’s not too much of a song there between Plant’s uninteligibly vibrato’d vocals and Page’s freeform slide guitar, but it’s an endearingly idiosyncratic way to end III, and hopefully Roy himself found it appropriately flattering. It’s a brilliant first half- minute, and there is no earthly reason why the song should last for another eight minutes after that. Hell of a riff, though. A little close to Jethro Tull for comfort at some moments, but an important transition track nonetheless. Does get extra points for the fine STP cover. Lyrics are a little wife- murder- y, though, so maybe try not to pay those too much mind. It has its place, though, and as a tribute to Plant’s son — who died tragically at age five a couple years earlier — it’s hard to argue with too much. It’s not our Zep of choice, but some long- haired couple’s probably getting married to it somewhere this weekend, so fair enough. The chorus is a little pat (“The greatest thing you ever could do now / Is lend a smile to someone who’s blue now”), but the sound is minorly mesmerizing, and would point the way toward’s much of the band’s musical future. Of course they didn’t have this many synths back then, but that’s OK — the keys don’t distract from Plant’s superlative vocal performance, reaching tortured heights not heard from the singer since “In My Time of Dying.”5. Gotta love the restraint the band shows with the song’s nearly two- minute whisper of an intro, before ripping into a double- tracked guitar lick that Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls never would have dreamed of. You can only imagine how great it could have been if the band had held on to the original bar- shanty lyrics to the Bonham- invented tune that inspired the song: “I’ve had a pint of bitter and now I’m feeling better and I’m out on the tiles. In fact, it’s quite necessary as a transition track between “Rock and Roll” and “Stairway to Heaven,” and the vocal interplay between Plant and Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny — one of the few guest vocalists to ever appear on a Zeppelin track — is fairly lovely, even if you wish they were given something to sing about other than the typical Lord of the Rings nonsense. Not quite, but impressively close — “Wearing” does achieve a kind of lean muscularity that’s rare in the band’s catalog, and Bonzo’s thumping motor keeps the song from ever lagging across its 5: 2. For better or worse, though, the hooks come out of this thing from so many different directions — not to mention that at a scant 2: 3. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin pellentesque mollis enim, at vulputate odio mollis sed. Praesent vestibulum tempor augue, vel egestas. There's quite a difference when director Oliver Stone actually gives a damn with a movie, and you can tell with Snowden that he is passionate about making a. Stanley Kauffmann argues in the latest New Republic that Christ might have enjoyed Monty Python's "Life of Brian" because he had a sense of humor, manifested by his. Heartbreaker”), it’s one of the group’s tightest jams — that it remains impossible to deny completely. The stop- start intro groove, the band’s unwillingness to determine any kind of pocket to get into, and of course, Plant’s dogged, James Brown- like pursuit of that ever- elusive bridge. It’s not like anything the Godfather of Soul would sign off on, but it’s also not really like anything else, ever. It was also Zep’s first song to bear any kind of obvious country influence, a direction that would get them into more trouble the further they followed it, but which is deployed quite perfectly here. Cameron Crowe liked it enough to make it Almost Famous’ last musical will and testament, so there you go. The guitar- only “Bron- Yr- Aur” gets the slight nod over the tabla- featuring “Black Mountain Side,” mainly for the awesome whooshing sound of the guitar riff that’s seemingly reversed on itself every so often — but both represent a key (if rarely seen) side of Zeppelin’s power. Why the breezy “Hey Hey” was left off LZIII when it would have fit so snugly into that second side — unless someone actually protested the misogynistic lyrical content, which in 1. LP, and AOR radio deservedly turned it into a Zep standard anyway. And it’s got one of the most upbeat choruses of any Zeppelin song, even though the words are so dark.” All true, making it the first album’s biggest grower of a track. Bonzo certainly earned the right to have one song a concert that he could turn into a ten- minute solo for his own self- gratification if he so desired, and “Moby” was that song — though in the studio, they at least keep that whale of a solo down to a (relatively) trim three minutes or so. Don’t sleep on that ridiculously grungy Page riff either, though — or Bonham’s underrated intro fill, sampled for the Beastie Boys’ “What Comes Around.”4. The rest of the New York- inspired song is fine, if mostly unextraordinary, but it does contain a fairly blistering eight- bar Page solo and a solid chorus hook: “My my my I’m so happy / I’m gonna join the band!” Sounds like fun. Plant’s banshee wailing is on point and the rhythm section is as locked in as ever, but really, it’s a showcase for Page, who kills every little mid- verse fill he gets — and he gets a lot of them — before out- Claptoning Clapton on the song’s proper solo(es). Something about the mix of “Evening” keeps it from being the dance- rock scorcher it probably should have been — the bass is barely audible, the synths are way too high, and Plant’s non- chorus vocals are thoroughly unintelligible (though the latter may have been purposeful and possibly for the best) — but it’s still a mostly successful expansion of the Zep sound, and a much- needed blast of energy coming off their least- propulsive album to date. ![]() ![]() ![]() On the whole, though, “Lemon” is stronger, with a riff as mean as the “Riverside” hook is gleeful, a great mid- and- late- song tempo switch, and a much better deployment of the infamous “squeeze my lemon” section — about as subtle as the band’s songwriting thievery, but as shamelessly inspired as well. With Page’s endless acoustic riffing and Plant’s double- tracked rhapsodizing laid over Bonham’s boom- bap drums, with handclaps and castanets and even spoons (!!) adding to the fun, it sounds like the whole village is in on this one, giving Zep the traveling- folk- band air they seemed determined to cultivate on LZIII’s first half. ![]() Despite hardly being the band’s most popular number, they played this one live throughout the ’7. Considering the time- signature trickery on display, it’s a little amazing that “Four Sticks” remains as enjoyable as it does — likely a tribute to the supernatural time- keeping ability of Bonham, who keeps the song pulsing along at a tense, almost suspenseful clip, long enough for the band to get to the song’s foreboding- synth climax. It peters out a little at the end, likely due to understandable exhaustion. The production is perfect, the harmonica solo comes screaming in from out of nowhere, and the guys seems to be talking to each other on a level they reached (disturbingly) infrequently in the late ’7. To stretch as few ideas as this song does over six minutes without ever being less than awesome is pretty damn hard to do. There’s not really a whole lot of song there, truly — it’s a repetitive and largely meaningless chorus, and the melody is pretty standard issue — but the band is just in such top form that “Rock and Roll” was able to become a classic worthy of exemplifying its title anyway. It’s just the sound of Zeppelin at their most generally unimpeachable, heavy without being overbearing, epic without being self- indulgent, anthemic almost just by showing up. Life of Brian Movie Review & Film Summary (1. Stanley Kauffmann argues in the latest New Republic that Christ might have enjoyed Monty Python's . That's more than can be said for those representatives of established religions who have condemned the movie for being blasphemous. As Kauffmann rightly points out, . The movie shows Christ only twice - - once in the manger, suitably illuminated by a halo, and the second time from the very back rows of the crowd gathered for the Sermon on the Mount (. The Greek shall inherit the Earth? Blessed are the cheesemakers??? Perhaps you don't find Monty Python funny; the troupe's peculiarly British brand of humor is sometimes impenetrable to Americans. But is it blasphemous? In terms of actual disrespect shown to Biblical legend, such epics as . The movie is the most ambitious project yet for the Python people, but had its inspiration, no doubt, in . What would have happened at your typical pre- Christian stoning? How did women find out what was going on when they were allegedly banned from public meetings? What if Pontius Pilate spoke with a lisp? A few slight lapses in reality are permitted, to be sure, as when Brian falls from a high tower and is saved by an alien spaceship that happens to whisk by at that very moment. If there is a problem with the Monty Python approach to comedy, it's that it is sometimes so British, so sly and so old- school that jokes are being made we can't quite understand. The same thing often occurs with the cartoons in Punch, the British weekly humor magazine: There are perfectly clear drawings with captions in plain English, but an American reader just doesn't get the joke. What's endearing about the Pythons is their good cheer, their irreverence, their willingness to allow comic situations to develop through a gradual accumulation of small insanities. American comedians seem to share, as a group, a need to be accepted, understood and approved of - - which is why even an insult artist like Don Rickles allows his act to degenerate into smarmy sweetnesses. The classic British comedians, on the other hand, seem to have become permanently disenfranchised even before first appearing in public; they have developed dottiness into an art form and refined it into an attitude.
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