10 Most Underrated Led Zeppelin Songs

Feature Photo: Bruce Alan Bennett / Shutterstock.com

For Led Zeppelin fans, there are pretty much no underrated Led Zeppelin songs. The band released original material over about a decade. From 1969 to 1979, they delivered eight studio albums—we don’t count Coda as a studio album—that their hardcore fans devoured and listened to every day. They still do. Of course, I can only speak for myself as a huge Led Zeppelin fan, but I still constantly play their music because it brings me great joy and stirs up a lot of memories. I know I’m not alone in that, so finding ten underrated songs from Led Zeppelin’s catalog for fans like myself and other hardcore followers is probably pretty impossible.

However, many people out there, especially younger listeners, might not be as familiar with their deeper tracks. They’ve heard the hits, of course, like “Kashmir,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Rock and Roll,” “Black Dog,” and “Whole Lotta Love,” but there are a lot of deeper album tracks they may not have discovered yet. There’s also some rare material—songs that weren’t released on any of the original studio albums—that we’ll present here. In the end, at least for us, it’s always a joy to write about Led Zeppelin, and we will continue to do so because this is classic rock history, baby.

# 10 – The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair – BBC Sessions

We wanted to start with something really special—perhaps even a Led Zeppelin song that many fans have never heard before. “The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair” was recorded on June 16, 1969, at Aeolian Hall for Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae and was officially released on BBC Sessions in 1997. If you don’t have those BBC recordings in your collection, you’re missing out on some truly great early Led Zeppelin performances. Listen to that Jimmy Page riff—it’s incredible—and you can also hear how deeply the band was drawing from the blues tradition that inspired so much of its earliest music.

# 9 – Sugar Mama – Coda Deluxe Edition

After John Bonham’s death in 1980 and the end of Led Zeppelin, the only new studio material fans initially received came through the outtakes collection Coda. Over time, we’ve come to appreciate that album a lot more, and the 2015 deluxe edition made it even more interesting by finally giving “Sugar Mama” an official release. The track had actually been recorded way back in 1968 at Olympic Studios during sessions for the band’s first album, so bootleg collectors had known about it for years before Jimmy Page finally brought it into the official catalog. It’s raw, bluesy early Zeppelin and exactly the kind of buried track that belongs on a list like this.

# 8 – Out on the Tiles – Led Zeppelin III

We didn’t want this list to focus solely on outtakes or late archival releases, so “Out on the Tiles” brings us straight back to the original 1970s albums. Released on Led Zeppelin III and written by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Bonham, the song has one of those great Zeppelin riffs that never seems to get enough attention. The band also frequently used the opening riff from “Out on the Tiles” as an introduction to “Black Dog” onstage, which makes the fact that the full song remains something of a deep cut even more interesting. We truly believe it’s one of their most underrated tracks.

# 7 – Royal Orleans – Presence

I have always loved the Presence album. Maybe it’s because I saw the tour that promoted this album in 1977. However, for whatever reason—except perhaps “Achilles Last Stand”—this is a record filled with songs that never really became Led Zeppelin classics in the way so much of their earlier material did. One of the killer tracks is “Royal Orleans,” which closes side one and was also used as the B-side of the “Candy Store Rock” single. Presence has always seemed overlooked by classic rock radio, and “Royal Orleans” is exactly the kind of song that proves why the album deserves another listen.

# 6 – Whole Lotta Love (Live Medley) – How the West Was Won

Of course, “Whole Lotta Love” is not an underrated Led Zeppelin song—it’s one of the most famous rock songs ever recorded—but this live version absolutely belongs here because of the enormous oldies-and-blues medley built into it. The version released on the original 2003 triple-CD set How the West Was Won runs more than 23 minutes and moves through “Boogie Chillun,” “Let’s Have a Party,” “Hello Mary Lou,” and “Going Down Slow” before the band is finished. If you don’t have this live album, we highly recommend it. Listen to Jimmy Page’s guitars and those heart-stopping John Bonham drums. Oh, baby!

# 5 – White Summer – BBC Sessions

This one is for the Jimmy Page fans. “White Summer” became one of the most heavily circulated Led Zeppelin live pieces on bootlegs, but the BBC performance featured here was recorded at London’s Playhouse Theatre on June 27, 1969, during a Radio One In Concert session. The performance combines Page’s extended acoustic showcase with “Black Mountain Side” and eventually brings John Bonham and John Paul Jones into the arrangement. It received an official release on the 1990 Led Zeppelin box set and later became part of the band’s BBC archival releases, finally giving collectors an official version of a performance they had chased for years.

# 4 – I’m Gonna Crawl – In Through the Out Door

In Through the out Door (Deluxe Edition)

And just like that, it was all over. “I’m Gonna Crawl” closes In Through the Out Door, the final Led Zeppelin studio album released during John Bonham’s lifetime, and perhaps we put it here for pure sentiment. Still, this slow, orchestrated blues deserves attention on its own merits. It never became one of the album’s big radio standards, and its unusual late-period sound gives Robert Plant plenty of room for one of his most emotional vocals. For us, the song carries extra weight because when that final note fades, the last original Led Zeppelin studio album of the 1970s is over.

# 3 – Friends – Led Zeppelin III

I think you’re probably getting the point that we believe Led Zeppelin III is the band’s most underrated album. It was more acoustic-based than the first two records and also had the impossible job of sitting between Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin IV, two of their most popular albums, along with Physical Graffiti, which is our favorite. Beyond “Immigrant Song,” the record is filled with classics such as “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” “Celebration Day,” “Tangerine,” and “Gallows Pole,” but “Friends,” sitting right after “Immigrant Song,” still feels like one of the songs that casual listeners miss. This one is a real keeper for us.

# 2 – Travelling Riverside Blues

Whenever we hear these final two songs, we shake our heads wondering why neither appeared on one of Led Zeppelin’s original studio albums. Led Zeppelin’s “Travelling Riverside Blues” drew from Robert Johnson’s blues classic and was recorded at BBC Maida Vale Studio 4 on June 24, 1969, for Top Gear. Hardcore collectors knew the performance long before it became official, but most fans first got it legitimately when it appeared on the four-CD Led Zeppelin box set in 1990; it later appeared again on the BBC collections. Its late official release is a big reason this fantastic performance remained far less familiar than the band’s standard album tracks.

# 1 – Hey, Hey, What Can I Do

We close out our “10 Most Underrated Led Zeppelin Songs” list with one of the band’s most beloved tracks among collectors. “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” was recorded in 1970 and released as the non-album B-side to “Immigrant Song,” which left generations of album buyers wondering how a song this good had been left off Led Zeppelin III. I’ve written about this song many times on the site, even dedicating an entire article to it, so I won’t repeat myself here. If you’ve never heard it before, take a listen and then ask yourself the same question: why, oh why, was this not released on Led Zeppelin III?