Dylstew

What I do hate about foreign songs is that I often can't sing along save for a line or two. As someone who loves singing, a song is a ton more fun if I can sing along.

Terrapin_Station

Songs that were played all the time on "album-oriented" FM radio included: "Good Times, Bad Times", "Whole Lotta Love", "Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid", "Immigrant Song", "Stairway to Heaven", "When the Levee Breaks", etc. There are a bunch more, and by the mid-1970s, there weren't many Zeppelin tracks that you'd be surprised to hear on the radio at least occasionally--a DJ might pick anything from any album, and Zeppelin were popular enough that more unusual choices were regularly heard.

You're going to respond by saying something about Billboard charts, and then I'll respond by noting that that response is further evidence that you don't know what you're talking about.

Terrapin_Station

Which is part of why you don't know what you're talking about. You're ridiculously, simplistically thinking that it necessarily has something to do with Billboard charts, and you're not even bothering to think about just what it was that Billboard charts were keeping track of in the 70s/how they were keeping track of it (not to mention probably not being aware of the fact that Billboard chart positions could be bought back then).

Also, if you're in the UK, I can't say much about what was popular or not, or how relatively popular anything was, in the UK in the 1970s. My knowledge is of the US. There are a lot of things about UK culture that I still don't understand very well, including that to my knowledge, how radio stations are run is--or at least was--completely different in the UK than in the US. Radio culture has also changed significantly many times in the US over the years, which is one reason that Billboard charts are much more significant now in telling you what's popular on the radio than they were in the late 1960s through the early 80s. Another reason for that is that Billboard has changed just what it is they're tracking and how they track it over the years.

Terrapin_Station

Who is really famous/"mainstream" etc. when their debut album comes out, though?

MicShazam

Wouldn't know, because I don't know his music! I think of Kate Bush as a more than decent example when it comes to clever lyrics. Sue me!
Could you name a song or two by mr guy face that has great lyrics? Just so I can check 'em out.

Chula Vista

For those that have no use for The Beatles, can you at least appreciate the song writing genius of this? The vocals in the chorus are brilliant.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

MicShazam

[Insert the Big Lebowski meme here)

Neapolitan

But not in England ... or at least not until 1997.

OK I absolutely know Hitchin' a Ride is mainstream cause when I played in plug.dj Paul Smeenus said he did not like it cause it was mainstream. But there are other reasons too. I picked Hitchin' a Ride because it shares some things in common that other songs had. It sounds Beatle-esque in my opinion. It has Ringo-esque drum beat. The piano take the place of the way Harrison plays his guitar chords. It has a recorder. Flutes and other woodwind instruments have been slowing gaining acceptance in Popular music, as well as in underground music at the time. It has a Peter Gun-esque break. It also has cow bell or the bell of the cymbal. It has decent harmonies. A tone-wheel organ makes a brief appearance. It's a fun song up-beat song. OK all those things are use sparingly in the song, they are used for hooks. Everything is nice and neat. It basically comes down to being a pop song.

OK both songs came out about the same time. Hitchin a Ride reached #16 while the Immigrant Song was nowhere to be found on the UK charts - or at least from the sources I've checked. Someone please go through the UK charts and fact-check that for me.

While Hitchin' a Ride is very similar to other songs at the time the Immigrant Song is sui generis. I am not saying its uniqueness automatically makes it underground. I saying it not really mainstream because it's not similar to other mainstream song at the time.

Hitchin' a Ride


Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song

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Key

^You have no idea wtf you're talking about. Just stop while you're behind.

Neapolitan

Why cause I said Led Zeppelin did not make songs that are like other bands at the time?

What-his-face used the popularity at the end of their career to say they were mainstream at the beginning of their career. I only disagreed with that. I don't think using how popular they were at end of their career or popularity that continued after they broke up to make a judgement of how they were in the beginning of their career. That is a historian's fallacy.

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