The 10 worst Led Zeppelin songs
Nothing in life is sacred. For far too many classic rock acts, the idea of having a spotless discography is accepted and extolled by fans. One bad word about some of the lesser cuts can lead to immediate ex-communication by the “experts” who deem you unworthy of having some varied opinions about songs. Some acts are especially egregious (looking at you, Beatles fans), but few acts have quite the effusive support that Led Zeppelin fans have toward their favourite band.
Zeppelin doesn’t have the far-reaching discography of peers like The Rolling Stones, so taking cheap shots isn’t in the equation. Between 1968 and 1980, Led Zeppelin recorded just over 100 songs. That’s nine studio albums to parse through, all of which have their highs and lows.
This won’t come as a surprise to most, but let us state the obvious here: the first half of Led Zeppelin’s career was far better than the second half. Between 1969 and 1971, Zeppelin released four self-titled albums (three and an untitled one, if you’re being picky about it) that are canon to rock and roll. Over the next decade, they released five more albums that varied in quality.
The first two, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, represent Zeppelin while they were still at the height of their powers. While they include genre diversions and outtakes, they also contain some of the most vital work that Zeppelin ever released. The following two albums, Presence and In Through the Out Door, were recorded during confusing and difficult times. Their quality is slightly lower, but there are still plenty of great songs on both albums.
After the band officially broke up after the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, Jimmy Page went through the band’s vault and cobbled together one final compilation album, Coda. Those are the albums that represent the core of Zeppelin’s discography, and those are the albums that are on the table as we search for the worst of what Zeppelin had to offer. Here are the ten worst Led Zeppelin songs.
The 10 worst Led Zeppelin songs:
‘Hot Dog’
A playful ode to the band’s love of rockabilly and old-school country-flavoured music, ‘Hot Dog’ is part of what makes In Through the Out Door one of Zeppelin’s most stylistically varied albums. Unfortunately, it’s also a major contributor towards what makes the album their most varied in terms of quality as well.
Featuring some great barrelhouse piano from John Paul Jones, ‘Hot Dog’ also features one of Jimmy Page’s worst guitar tones on record, some surprisingly basic drumming from John Bonham, and one of Robert Plant’s most irritating lead vocal performances. It would have made a fun outtake, but ‘Hot Dog’ shows that Zeppelin had no need to go country.
‘Walter’s Walk’
It almost feels wrong to include songs from Coda on this list. Much in the same way that Physical Graffiti was filled out by songs left in the band’s vault, Coda was assembled with outtakes and unreleased material that Jimmy Page deemed worthy. The difference is that Led Zeppelin had a lot of great outtakes in 1975. That wasn’t quite the case in the early 1980s.
‘Walter’s Walk’ had already been passed over once for inclusion when the band decided not to put it on Physical Graffiti. The Houses of the Holy outtake was then spruced with a new guitar line from Page and new vocals from Plant. The result is a disjointed mix of old and new Zeppelin, neither of which gel into a solid final state.
‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’
There’s a solid argument I can see that ‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’ was a precursor to the lo-fi rock movement that exploded in the decades after Zeppelin’s demise. But while most lo-fi music takes its charms from its lack of fidelity, ‘Hats Off’ just leaves you begging for the song to have been recorded properly.
Plant’s voice sounds as if it came straight from a car radio. Page’s slide guitar stings the eardrums every time he goes up for a slide. The track is also clearly an improvised piece that can’t hold a candle to either the band’s best material or their more fun knockoffs (see ‘Boogie With Stu’). ‘Hats Off’ leaves a bad taste in your mouth, especially after the aching beauty that makes up most of Led Zeppelin III.
‘Ozone Baby’
Led Zeppelin seemed completely confused when punk and new wave started to emerge in the late 1970s. Zeppelin’s bread and butter was muscular riff rock, but these new styles of music favoured minimalism and slickness, two things that weren’t exactly in Zeppelin’s wheelhouse.
‘Ozone Baby’ tries too hard to sand down the rougher edges that make Zeppelin so unique. Jones’ bass sounds too rubbery, while Page’s guitar is dying to kick up the distortion. Bonham’s drums are perfectly in the pocket, but he also gets victimized by the gloss that smoothes out the track way too much.
‘Sick Again’
Led Zeppelin always had a sordid reputation when it came to the groupie scene of the 1970s. A particular favourite among the “baby groupies”, who were young teenage hangers-on, Zeppelin exerted far too much power and sexual influence over young girls at the time. Page was literally having sex with a 14-year-old girl and purposefully hiding her in his hotel room.
Even without all of that context, the lyrics to ‘Sick Again’ are just fucking gross. “Said you dug me since you were thirteen / Then you giggle as you heave and sigh.” Plant tried to claim that he felt sorry for these girls and that the lyrics to ‘Sick Again’ were sympathetic to them, but that’s hard to grasp when he moans ‘I’m the one you want / I got to be the one you need” over and over again.
‘Royal Orleans’
Speaking of questionable lyrical content, ‘Royal Orleans’ was another case of Plant ending up on the wrong side of the seriousness/joke divide. While the rhythm track is certainly one of Zeppelin’s most air-tight and groovy, Plant’s attempts to mock John Paul Jones for allegedly going to bed with a drag queen and accidentally lighting his hotel room on fire was probably a hilarious story at the time, but it reads just a bit differently today.
Jones himself certainly took a bit of umbrage with the song. “Oh, that was Robert in his usual homophobic manner,” Jones claimed in 2001. “Everybody knew who those [drag queens] were. They were friends of Richard [Cole]’s. And yes, we knew they were transvestites. We were friends… But Robert was a bit provincial.” ‘Royal Orleans’ might still rock, but the mocking lyrics don’t quite fly in the same way today.
‘Carouselambra’
The late 1970s was a strange time for Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page and John Bonham were quarrelling with their addictions to heroin and alcohol, respectively. That left plenty of room for John Paul Jones to contribute musically. While his instincts had steered him right on all-time great tracks like ‘Black Dog’, ‘No Quarter’, and ‘In The Light’, Jones was less on-point when it came to ‘Carouselambra’.
The problems with ‘Carouselambra’ are obvious: it’s way too long, and the keyboards that Jones used sound horribly outdated. Perhaps with a modern touch or a live reworking, ‘Carouselambra’ could have really been something. As it stands, the studio cut is chintzy and interminable, sinking the already-shaky In Through the Out Door completely.
‘All My Love’
It’s easy to beat up on ‘All My Love’. Led Zeppelin’s wimpiest track by a country mile is often the token sacrifice when it comes to naming the worst Led Zeppelin songs. It’s surely not as bad as its reputation suggests, especially when you consider that Plant is singing to his deceased son. C’mon, people: have a heart.
It might not be the band’s worst song, but when you need to fill out ten spots on a list like this, it’s hard to keep ‘All My Love’ off. Page certainly wasn’t a big fan of the song. “I was a little worried about the [‘All My Love’] chorus,” Page said in Brad Tolinski’s book Light and Shade. “I could just imagine people doing the wave and all of that. And I thought ‘That is not us. That is not us’. In its place it was fine, but I would not have wanted to pursue that direction in the future.”
‘Bonzo’s Montreaux’
John Bonham undoubtedly has one of the most legendary drum solos in rock history. The recorded version of ‘Moby Dick’ that appears on Led Zeppelin II is a great distillation of Bonham’s unmatched skill and power, and his subsequent live versions of the song extended the solo to wild new heights.
It’s nice that Page wanted to create a sequel from some of Bonham’s in-studio solos for Coda. But ‘Bonzo’s Montreaux’ is completely nullified by ‘Moby Dick’ and its subsequent live renditions. Why Page felt the need to add a bunch of clanging effects to Bonham’s solo is anyone’s guess.
‘I’m Gonna Crawl’
Led Zeppelin goes new age. The closing track to In Through the Out Door takes all of the cheesy synths that John Paul Jones utilised in the album’s previous song, ‘All My Love’, and lets them float all over ‘I’m Gonna Crawl’. At the centre, Plant sings some of the least convincing lyrics, desperately trying to adapt his cock rock persona into something more delicate and lovely.
Instead, Plant simply caterwauls his way through ‘I’m Gonna Crawl’ was an aimless limp. Only when he hits his long sustained notes does it sound like Plant is fully checked in. That’s more than can be said for either Page or Bonham, whose contributions to ‘I’m Gonna Crawl’ are minimal and forgettable.
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