The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them.

I listen to the album first before reading anything about it. Often, I don’t even read anything about the album, because I want to experience listening to the music as someone did before the Internet made infinite knowledge available. Led Zeppelin is another album in which I don’t care to know about its production, writing, or reception. I slip on my headphones, turn the volume up 100 percent, and let the songs soak through me.

“Good Times Bad Times” and “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” are killer opening songs, with “Babe…” being one of my all-time favorite Zeppelin songs. I could listen to it on repeat forever. It’s sluggy with a streak of classical clarity guiding its melody.

Then we get to “Dazed and Confused,” and I’m reminded of Everything is a Remix, Part 1. It was through this video that I learned how much Zeppelin ripped off other artists for some of their biggest hits. Remixing other artists, appropriating their work and making it your own is a practice I’m on the fence about. Part of me wants to believe that creativity stems from true originality. The other part of me knows that nothing is really new, even if you think it is. With a song like “Dazed and Confused,” I’m in the camp of not approving its downright thievery. Go ahead and quote Eliot to me. It’s still theft. Zeppelin just didn’t remix it enough to make it their own. (By the way, “Babe…” is a cover and properly attributed as such, unlike “Dazed…”)

Moving on. “Communication Breakdown” is another all-time, original, Zeppelin favorite of mine. If I could just listen to “Good Times Bad Times,” “Babe I’m Gonna to Leave You”, and “Communication Breakdown,” I’d be totally happy with this album and rank it much higher on Rolling Stone‘s list. Adding the other songs on there weighs it down, placing it exactly where it should be on the list.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project:

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