Review #123: Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin
#123: Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin
I love Led Zeppelin, I love Led Zeppelin, I love Led Zeppelin.
I love listening to Led Zeppelin albums. I love reading about Led Zeppelin, I love writing about Led Zeppelin, I like thinking about whether or not Jimmy Page is BFFs with the Devil. It’s hard for me to say anything negative at all about Led Zeppelin.
My boyfriend likes Led Zeppelin a little less than me (which is okay, more room in Led Heaven for me). However, I’m afraid he made a great point the other day while I was listening to LZII again, an album that I could listen to forever.
“How many bands are included more than five times on this list?” he asked. “I wonder what percentage of the RS 500 list is just mega-stars and super famous bands. I know they’re probably numerically the most popular albums of all time, but … it just seems like it goes against the spirit of the list to have some artists dominate so much.”
“Shut up!” I said, and listened to Led Zeppelin.
FAVORITE SONGS:
“Whole Lotta Love” — You should either listen to this album with headphones on or on VERY LOUD speakers.
“What Is and What Should Never Be” — How could you not love explosive guitar noises?
“The Lemon Song” — WOW, have you ever looked up the words to this song?! Why am I always shocked when a rock song is vulgar?
“Heartbreaker” — Oh this guitar intro is my favorite. Nirvana has a really hilarious cover of this.
“Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)” — The line about alimony cracks me up every time.
“Ramble On” — The Lord of the Rings song! Let’s analyze these lyrics: ‘T was in the darkest depths of Mordor/ I met a girl so fair/ But Gollum, and the evil one/ Crept up and slipped away with her. My theory: Jimmy Page had the One True Ring at one point, then Robert Plant (Gollum) stole it from him in the night.
“Bring It on Home” — This is kind of a weird connection, but this song really reminds me of Sublime’s “Freeway Time in LA County Jail” from their sophomore album Robbin’ The Hood. (By the way, can you believe that there are NO Sublime albums on this list?! Bradley Nowell didn’t die for that!)
LEAST FAVORITE SONGS:
“Thank You” — Beautiful, but a little boring.
IS RS FULL OF IT?
Ugh, okay, fine, he makes a good point. After all, 5 albums is 1% of the list.
After checking my handy-dandy spreadsheet, I found that there are eight artists who have over five albums: the Beatles (9!), Bob Dylan (8), Kanye West (6), Neil Young (6), the Rolling Stones (6), Bruce Springsteen (5), David Bowie (5), and, you guessed it, Led Zeppelin (5). Altogether, those artists have 50 albums on the list, which is a whopping 10% of the total.
So that’s 50 albums spread between 8 artists. 50 albums! If you took away just two albums from each of those artists, you could include 16 other albums that deserve to be here just as much.
I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, but it seems unjust to have Led Zeppelin hog a full 1% of the real estate when Sublime’s Robbin’ The Hood is nowhere to be found. So, even though I know I’m alienating some of my core audience here, I humbly submit that LZII should make some room for Sublime.
