64. "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin

Attributing this song to Led Zeppelin is a controversial act, you know. It's the signature song on their classic first album, an acidy blues-metal piece that was the prototype for the band's sound and the centerpiece of their live show. The band just neglected to mention it's not their song. Before Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page's old band the Yardbirds played a version of "Dazed and Confused," but it wasn't their song either. It was written and originally recorded by moody folk singer Jake Holmes. The song appears on his 1967 album The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes.

And it is a mess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTsvs-pAGDc

Dear Christ, what is that? Of course, the root bass line is there, also the basic idea of the verse singing melody, give him some credit. And actually, the confused tappings and attempts at instrumental brooding at the midway point are the predecessors of the trippy instrumental improv that the two subsequent rock versions would have. But let's face reality: Mr. Holmes didn't know what he had here. Then he made the mistake of playing a show with the Yardbirds, where his song caught the ear of Jimmy Page, who knew just exactly what the hell he had here.

But still when you know the final Led Zeppelin version, the Yardbirds version, while pointed in the same direction, has some laughably inferior elements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffBRhtWjEQ

Watch that clip at the URL above to see the Yardbirds performing their "Dazed and Confused." Now listen to the Led Zeppelin version in the link below, assuming you haven't heard it before. The Yardbirds vocalist is Keith Relf, and he seems to be trying extra hard to remind everyone preemptively that he is not Robert Plant. Very, very much not Robert Plant. The mousey, monotone, meandering version of the vocal he provides is dumbfoundingly incompatible with a song that Robert Plant rightly saw as the proving ground for his shrieking vocal attack. The drumming (Jim McCarty) is competent... merely competent, like he was telling himself not to steal the show. Like Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham took "Dazed and Confused" and turned it into his clinic on composed savagery, where he brashly butts into the spotlight at every turn. The bass playing is okay in the Yardbirds version, the virtuosic backbone of all the fantastically upgraded improv in the Led Zeppelin version. 

In that Yardbirds clip, only one musician looks natural, and that is Jimmy Page, playing a guitar part he kept playing almost verbatim in Led Zeppelin, only with bandmates who were just messing everything up around him. He was clearly ready for a stage and coworkers greater than what he was then supplied with.

In short: This is a Led Zeppelin song!

Someone else wrote its most basic elements, and there should have been an attribution. But everybody else was in a hurry to mess this song up, while Led Zeppelin made it their definitive pre-"Stairway to Heaven" epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdcsR0YaOE8

62. "Dancing Days" by Led Zeppelin

To dissect one of my favorite songs of all time seems disrespectful.

It's a cool one! Drums are cool, singing cool, guitars maybe some of the coolest Jimmy Page devised. John Paul Jones has a pretty basic job on bass but also layers in an essential organ part into the verses.

Formally, this song has no sung choruses. There are fantastically fun, harmonically brilliant verses, while the song's defining guitar melody serves as the refrain. It's a Page and Plant duality par excellence. And the song has only these two parts, progressively gaining intensity, until there is a great instrumental development played just before the big ending. Formal novelties like this are the rule on the entire album on which this song appears - the incomparable Houses of the Holy, maybe the best rock record ever made.

Just a unique combination of melody, modality, rhythm, and instrument sound. Led Zeppelin at their most sonically visionary.

60. "Custard Pie" by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin are so good they can make you think the main riff in this song is an odd time signature. But count it: Four. Beats. 

What locked-in funky rock this is. The guitar is just buzzy enough, grinding out compressed chords. The really awesomely phrased guitar solo shows us a rare test of the wah pedal by Jimmy Page. The groovy John Paul Jones bass line calls back to the fun of Led Zeppelin II, four albums prior. I'm thinking especially of the bass line in "Lemon Song," another song about food that just doesn't seem to be about food. 

The drums could've played it straight on the verses and the song would never have made it out of the writing stages, much less to opening track status on the titanic Physical Graffiti album. Instead, the drums simultaneously finesse around the beat and crack with John Bonham's unsuppressable ferocity. The drums doubling the guitar rhythm on the chorus leads to cool hanging notes where there may have been only standard rock-pattern drum thudding had someone less bombastic held the sticks. The cardinal rule: Drum creativity is song creativity.

For vocals, I really think the whole Physical Graffiti album is Robert Plant's masterpiece. There is so much fluidity here, such an organic delivery, almost like he's just making up the melody on the spot. However, the melodies repeat pretty faithfully, demonstrating how crafted they are.

The ending has the best little repeat singing part, not to mention a harmonica solo right when we really needed a harmonica solo in our lives. It's up there with "When the Levee Breaks" for Plant's harmonica work, which is weirdly underrated. He's no Paul Butterfield, but come on, he's a legitimate instrumental contributor. 

Led Zeppelin have this reputation as being this dark band, I think mainly due to Jimmy Page's purported fascination with the occult. But they were really one of the great light bands to ever play, with so many songs like this one, full with fun and celebration.

53. "Communication Breakdown" by Led Zeppelin

I usually try to link to a studio version of each song I post about, because if you've not heard the song before, I want to at least give you one chance. And then maybe you'll want to own a superior audio version at some point. 

I make an effort to avoid linking music videos for songs, just to limit distractions from what the song really is versus what maybe appealing and marketable things are being done on a visual companion to the song to drive sales.

And I usually avoid linking to live performances, just because the studio versions are the fullest experiences of most songs on my list.

For "Communication Breakdown," that last rule breaks down. There is nothing I can tell you about this song without showing you the flailing drum performance of John Bonham live on this video. Throw in an absolutely peak power Robert Plant vocal, and you see the two unvarnished, unschooled talents that propelled Led Zeppelin past any competition.

The music otherwise is pretty simple to understand. The same concept worked again on the next album with "Whole Lotta Love": Find one excellent down-strummed blues riff and pummel the world with it.

38. "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin launched their career with two nearly perfect hard rock albums, full of classics and essential deep cuts. For their third album, they decided to slow down momentarily to widen the range of their sound and took a writing retreat to the bucolic Welsh cottage of Braun-Y-Aur.

In this serene setting, they developed the acoustic instrumentation that began to define their most mature sound. There are plenty of famous examples of work that emerged from that cottage, but one of the best, most joyful songs they ever wrote is not too widely known. 

"Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" is a song about a dog in the countryside. Enjoy.