Favourite Song by Band

4 days ago was the 25th anniversary of Tragic Kingdom, so let's do No Doubt.

I'll let Dracula pick the obvious songs.

And pick this high school favorite for Doomsday

I don't know. I'm quite fond of this song.

I really liked Tragic Kingdom. Dont know much of their other stuff.

There's plenty of examples... but I get your point. This is No Doubt.

Finally, a band I have strong feelings about. 

Unlike all the bands where I felt compelled to pick the obvious answers I can definitively say that Stairway to Heaven is not my favorite Zeppelin song!  I don't dislike it but I never quite got the hype over it and would maybe put it in my top twenty.  As far as their huge singles go stuff like Living Loving Maid, Ramble On, Black Dog, Rock and Roll, are all self evidently awesome and are such fixtures in my head that it's hard to rank any of them ahead of one another. 

The one super obvious single that I do think probably deserves separate mention and might be the gun to my head favorite of the major singles is probably Immigrant Song, which really broke out of their usual hard blues pattern and feels like an ahead of its time piece of work that still holds up today.


Another obvious pick that can't go unmentioned is Kashmir, which just has a really immortal riff and just feels like this really big grand almost progressive rock sort of thing. 


Then of course there's their cover of When the Levee Breaks, which is probably their most successful attempt to rework and fit within the American Blues tradition within their arena rock style.  That drum sound is incredible and it's not a coincidence that it's been sampled a billion times. 


I generally think their first album works a bit better as a collection than for its individual songs, but I do feel like Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is pretty damn special in the way it takes this folk song and turns it into this hard rocking freak-out of a song which really set the pattern for what the band would become.  Also that riff sounds an awful lot like the one Chicago would use in "25 or 6 to 4."


Then there's In the Light, a song I always loved back when I was going through my initial Zeppelin phase back in high school and college and which I was reminded of and had a renewed appreciation for after it was used so brilliantly in the season one finale of Mindhunter.  That song really takes you on a journey.


It would of course be a mistake to only look at the band's arena conquering anthems and ignore the quieter and more acoustic side of their sound and I think one of the best of those would be their song That's the Way, which was of course used to great effect in the movie Almost Famous.


Then in the realm of experiments that I seem to like a whole lot better than most people I'd point to D'yer Mak'er, which is sort of their take on the reggae, which I'm sure isn't to the taste of most rock purists or reggae purists but I think its a pretty fun and relaxing song.

 
Speaking of relaxing Zeppelin songs that don't get talked about much, Down by the Seaside, has always been a favorite of mine.  Really just puts you in a mood.

In The Light is also one of my favs. Most of the songs from Physical Graffiti are fantastic. I love the cymbal smashing and drums in Sick Again.

For anyone that likes Trampled Underfoot or Physical Grafitti generally, I highly recommend the album from Them Crooked Vultures a few years back.

Dave Grohl on drums, Josh Homme on vocals/guitar, and John Paul Jones just killing it on the bass/keyboard, re-capturing damn near all of his magic from the Physical Grafitti-era Zeppelin.

What is And Should Never Be - the dual channel guitar outro is sublime

In My Time of Dying - transformative drumming from Bonham, and I love how they let him loose in the coda.

Hey, Hey What Can I Do - best b side in rock history? Wasn't on an album until they tacked it onto Coda in the 1990 box-set re-release