This brief but informative article is part of a series here on the Rockpedia focusing on Led Zeppelin and the band’s history. This particular article includes a series of important reasons why Led Zeppelin II is a must listen studio album for any true Led Zeppelin fan out there!
Led Zeppelin II logo. Image source: IMGbin
After the major debut studio album of the group, simply titled ‘Led Zeppelin I’ and released on 12 January 1969, the English giants from Led Zeppelin continued to progress musically with ‘Led Zeppelin II’, which has a much more hard rock edge to it. ‘Led Zeppelin II’ was released on 22 October 1969 through Atlantic Records, the record label that the band were affiliated with, and was recorded between April and August 1969. Additionally, ‘Led Zeppelin II’ is one of the studio albums of the late 1960s which marks the rise of heavy metal as either a full-fledged genre or sub-genre of rock music (depending on how one perceives heavy metal).
In addition to its hard rock edge and innovation in terms of bringing forth heavy metal to rock audiences from all around the world throughout the late 1960s and beyond, ‘Led Zeppelin II’ (as each and every Led Zeppelin record for that matter) has a strong blues rock tint or touch to it. The record only produced one single, more specifically ‘Whole Lotta Love/’Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)’ on 7 November 1969 in the United States.
As it was previously mentioned, ‘Led Zeppelin II’ is considered an innovative record in rock music in that it basically introduces a mark of heavy metal in the band’s evolving sound which later influenced many other rock bands throughout the 1970s and beyond. While the critics weren’t impressed at first with what they listened to on this album (most likely considering the heavy metal direction of the band of some blues standards such as, most notably, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, as ‘bad taste’, as per the words of Robert Plant in a 2012 interview), retrospectively, ‘Led Zeppelin II’ was still a groundbreaking musical masterpiece. Eventually, the record was well ranked by such music websites and publications such as AllMusic, Blender, Q, or The Rolling Stone Album guide. Last but not least, the album was a commercial breakthrough for the band and is considered very influential by music critics nowadays (very much fortunately I should add). Overall, the album’s sound is a mixture of hard rock, blues rock, and heavy metal. It has a total length of 40 minutes and 44 seconds. The LP (i.e. long play) was produced by Jimmy Page and Eddie Kramer.
The tracklist of the album is as follows:
Side one
- Whole Lotta Love
- What Is and What Should Never Be
- The Lemon Song
- Thank You
Side two
- Heartbreaker
- Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)
- Ramble On
- Moby Dick
- Bring It On Home
Below are my favourite songs from the album embedded via YouTube. I truly hope you will like (re)listening to them as much as I do (and did) throughout the passage of time. Many thanks for your time, attention, and readership! It means a lot to me! All the best and rock on! 🙂 🤘
Documentation sources and external links:
- Led Zeppelin II on www.wikipedia.org (in English)
- Led Zeppelin on www.wikipedia.org (the online website of Encyclopædia Britannica)
- How Led Zeppelin II changed the face of rock music on www.loudersound.com