Led Zeppelin Song Rankings

[Phoebe]

A story about Zeppelin rankings:
When I was about 15 I was probably one of the biggest Zeppelin fans walking the Earth. I made it my business to know everything I could discover about their music and about the members themselves. So for example if they mentioned a guy named Roy Harper, who sang with them, I went out and bought any Roy Harper album or music I could get my hands on and researched him in the library, very old school. Still have some of that vinyl; it's kind of like if Richard Dawkins somehow became a mystical hippie while retaining a few aspects of his former self. Anyway, I did this for everything I could uncover in the liner notes or information available about their albums. I uncritically accepted all the things I learned about them and found it very easy to explain away anything negative as mendacious criticism coming from the same bunch of extremist Christians who probably thought I was going to hell too, and were not shy about saying so. Nobody was actually talking about their sexual abuse of teenagers in a realistic manner - all these stories were told as if they were normal parts of the excess of rock stars. When you are a teenager yourself, and you encounter abusive creeps, it's easy to explain to yourself that those people have nothing whatsoever in common with Robert Plant. It took me a long time to sort all of this out later as facts came to light and I gained an ability to distinguish what was likely true from what was likely the exaggerated raving of people who think Led Zeppelin and D&D are both devil worshiping cults.

So, interestingly the seeds of my discontent with Led Zeppelin were born purely out of appreciation of the music. I literally did not believe my parents when they said that one of those songs was a Joan Baez song until they pulled out the album and played it for me. I assumed that the band treated folk music and blues music in similar ways, as inspirational fodder for its own unique creations. Over time I started to realize first that the original artists were often doing it better, and that something about the way Zeppelin was playing blues music was diminishing the quality of the actual music. Then later of course I started to realize how much of it was flat out stolen and unoriginal. That also took a long time to figure out and the music media really wasn't talking about this in an objective manner. People who didn't like the band would say it, but then they didn't like the band so I didn't believe their biased charges. This is still in the time when modems are rare and one is not popping up research on the phone from Google.

The biggest nail in the coffin of my Led Zeppelin obsession was delivered when I did an actual research project on blues lyrics which required digging through a bunch of library stacks and making repeated discoveries of how much rich and original material was out there and how pathetically and poorly it had been treated by many later white artists, not just this one. I got old enough to start going to blues shows and listening to those artists on my own, finally grasping the disconnect between the reality of their lives as musicians and what was happening in the music industry.

All of these factors were dampening my personal interest in the group but I still loved their music. They still did do incredibly innovative and awesome things, despite all the theft and exploitation and bad behavior. So only now after many decades of listening to other music and being far distant from that initial obsession do I feel like I can look at it with fresh eyes and ears and figure out what I really loved about it and what was dispensable and never good. So now I will give you my ranking and it has been pleasant to consider what was good about the mediocre, truly bad about the bad, and truly excellent about the many moments of excellence in their oeuvre.

[poorpete]

Ooof, the power of fandom. Glad you were able to question your preconceptions. I still have a hard time sometimes, like if someone knocks on The Beatles or Hitchcock.

I think a major change for me was when hashtag me too started, someone said ~we don't want to go down this road because if we knew all the skeletons there's some famous and admired people that we'd have to cancel. And I thought..... good! I like music, and I like to think many of these people are fine people, but if say Led Zeppelin were creeps, Ringo Starr beat his wife, and on and on, I'm glad we know! Hold em accountable.

I didn't listen too much to the lyrics on relisten -- honestly some I skipped after a 30 seconds, like "oh yeah, I remember this one", so I'll trust you more on lyrical content, though this one from Hot Dog took it from "yeah, it's a fine pastiche", to "ewwwww"

I took her love at seventeen
A little late these days, it seems

Also, I can think Spirit should have won their "Stairway" case, they were obviously ripped off without compensation, but also think "Stairway" is an all time great song.

[Phoebe]

That's the paradox inherent to fondness for Zeppelin: at the same time it's a great song, so great that comparison to whatever it might have been derived from seems silly, but then... did they in fact derive too much, as they so often did with other artists? Maybe.

You may be both depressed and amused to hear that Hot Dog won't appear for a little while longer because, for one, it's kind of a rockin' version of a country song, and two, at least he exhibits some type of sardonic self-awareness (perhaps it is too much to say, a creeping note of self-critique?) with his teenage girlfriend lyrics in this one. Others seem much worse in that regard, as we shall soon see!

[Phoebe]

Another set of info that might explain a lot of what's to come, given the personal idiosyncracies, is this ranking of the whole albums:

9. CODA
8. Physical Graffiti
7. II
6. In Through the Out Door
5. I
4. Houses of the Holy
3. III
2. Presence
1. IV

[poorpete]

My top 5 would be:

Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin II
Houses of the Holy
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin III

If I go by average, the next four would be
Physical Graffiti
In Through the Out Door
Coda
Presence

If you go by median, it would be:
Presence
Physical Graffiti
In Through the Out Door
Coda

When I did this ranking 10 years go I went:
In through the Out Door
Physical Graffiti
Presence
Coda

[Phoebe]

Lol my ranking might grow disturbing!

[poorpete]

I'm looking forward to it!

Here's my ranking based on rating each song yesterday.

Screen Shot 2022-05-27 at 4.24.55 PM.png (72.44 KiB) Viewed 308 times

Clearly "IV" stands above the rest. One reason: there's not a stinker on there.
I guess it's clear from this I have three tiers

Top tier, I'd own these if I bought albums anymore:
IV, II, Houses

Good tier, I'd buy these if they were on sale, skip the songs I dislike
I, III, Graffiti

Mediocre tier, I'd buy a few songs but otherwise I'm good:
In>Out▯,Coda,Presence

[poorpete]

Now here's my ranking of albums based on their cover art:

I - Iconic, better than the album itself
IV - Cool, feels like something that would look nice on a wall
II - Grimy and stark and a bit ugly, just like the album
Physical Graffiti - neat but a bit boring, just like the album
Coda - elegant design, but is this why we get the led out?
III - a mess, just like the album
In Through the Out Door - forgettable, just like the album
Houses of the Holy - creepy and weird, like the band, not a fan of nudity on album covers to begin with (once a prude, always) but extra so when it's kids
Presence - Booooooooring, just like....

[Phoebe]

The color coded ratings chart has amazed me. I can't even explain to you how much I like color coded charts and stuff of this general nature. It also makes clear the problem: you are rating Achilles' Last Stand too low. Maybe we have other areas of disagreement about II and III and such, although I agree with you IV is good because it simply doesn't have a bad song, even if not all of them are my favorites. But the actual conflict is probably that I think a few songs like Achilles, In the Evening, All of my Love, etc, are SUPER HIGHLY RANKED! We shall see!

[poorpete]

It's possible! I'm tempted to try to find my ratings from 10 years ago and see how they differ. Achilles is my favorite from the album... and I think I liked it more when I was a kid. I can be swayed back

[Phoebe]

OK, I don't want to get too deep into spoilers here but let's just say Achilles is one of my top five or so songs! The important thing is that I like everything on that album. It has a kind of darkness I appreciate. It's not like they're old at that point but I do think we're getting a radically different Plant in his late 20s, and I feel like we see the Jones/Bonham team playing at the most cohesive, driving much of the song structure and keeping things a little more grounded than they were early on.