How many Led Zeppelin albums went to number one?
Once the dust had settled on the age of ‘peace and love’ hippiedom, the rock and roll world was primed for another musical revolution, and that transformation arrived in the form of Led Zeppelin, paving the way for the hard rock domination of the 1970s.
Led Zeppelin weren’t, of course, the sole voice of hard rock during the turn of the 1970s, but they were in a league entirely of their own. From the very earliest days of the band’s formation, rising from the ashes of The Yardbirds’ demise, Jimmy Page refused to follow the typical path of virtually every other rock band at that time. Namely, the group never had any interest whatsoever in creating hit singles.
Since the dawn of rock and roll’s first emergence, the humble single has been its weapon of choice. For many, in fact, hit records are a metric of success. Yet, Led Zeppelin managed to become the biggest rock band on the face of the planet back in the 1970s, without ever having entered a song into the UK singles chart. No, it was long-form compositions which Page and the gang were pursuing, and it is that which helped them change rock and roll forever.
Although Zeppelin could never be considered a progressive rock band, they did share the scene’s tendency to have songs extend far beyond the typical two-to-three-minute runtime of most rock songs. In fact, some of Page’s most extensive compositions, like ‘Achilles Last Stand’, occupied the vast majority of an entire LP side. It is no surprise, then, that more and more groups started crafting entire albums rather than mere singles in the wake of Zeppelin’s success.
Without that time wasted trying to conjure up commercial hits, the group were able to churn out a lot more albums than their contemporaries. In only the first two years of their existence, in fact, Led Zeppelin managed to release a total of four full-length albums, of which at least three are utter masterpieces – although we will leave it up to your imaginations which record lags ever so slightly behind the rest.
Still, it is hit records that put food on the table or, in the case of Led Zeppelin, cocaine on the private jet. So, instead of pursuing the fickle world of hit singles, the group instead crafted a litany of hit albums.
Their very first record, unleashed onto the airwaves back in 1969, peaked at number six in the UK album charts, but their subsequent releases would go even further.
From Led Zeppelin II right through to In Through The Out Door, every new album released by Page and co went to the top of the album charts, including the live album The Song Remains The Same. In total, the band amassed an impressive eight number-one albums, of which Led Zeppelin III spent the longest in the charts, sticking to the top spot for four weeks.
While the band were never really out to amass commercial successes, their impressive run of number-one albums is certainly reflective of their unparalleled domination of the rock and roll landscape during the 1970s. What’s more, their existence proved, once and for all, that the battle for rock superiority is not fought entirely within the realm of the singles chart.
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