STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN / WHOLE LOTTA LOVE

'Stairway To Heaven' - Led Zeppelin (Single)

How could it possibly get less than five stars? It would be shameful. The only reason a song like this could receive less than that would be because of it's overplayed nature, but that's only a product of the song's original quality.

All preconceptions and overpopularities aside, the song is amazing. There's a very intended buildup from acoustic to clean to distorted. Cryptic, rhythmic lyrics from Robert Plant; the soaring, perfect guitar solo from Page...

Clocking in at eight minutes, it's easy to see why Led Zeppelin can at least be considered Prog-Related from a song like this. Overplayed, yes. But when it comes down to it, an excellent song, deserving of it's title.

Masterful.

Stairway To Heaven is legendary and quintessential classic rock with Led Zeppelin at their best. And the real surprise on this single is the B side is another legendary song with Whole Lotta Love released from "Led Zeppelin 2".

Both are masterpieces and hallmarks of the great Led Zeppelin. The single sky rocketed them to success and the album "Led Zeppelin 4" has become one of the greatest albums of all time and in fact sits very comfortably at the top of many top 100 albums lists. The main reason is Stairway to Heaven, a song that captivates with it's spell binding lyrics about finding a way to heaven, though has dark overtones of losing the soul. The song has been played to death on radio but never loses its power.

Whole Lotta Love is infamous with a killer riff, that every guitarist knows, and a mid section that is progressive and entrancing, as there is a jazz drum section, a strange vocal that echoes toward the ears, backwards, and very weird Plantisms as he screams 'love' from the bottom end up to his highest range. There is a lot of ad libbing and crazy guitar fills here; it is quite simply a masterpiece. I rarely give a single the masterpiece status but here an exception must be made.