🎸 My Personal Best 25: Led Zeppelin Edition — No.15 “The Ocean”

■For more details about 【Led Zeppelin】, click here・・・・➡ 🎈（Zeppelin）

🎸【Led Zeppelin Series】No.15 is・・・・

No.15 is “The Ocean.”

When I first started thinking about whether to include this song in the Best 25, even before ranking it, it felt like a slightly hard piece to handle. It doesn’t push itself forward strongly, and it doesn’t have a single “decisive” moment that seals the deal.
And yet, as I kept rearranging the whole list, it continued to remain in a spot that I simply couldn’t remove.
In the end, this feels less like a song I “chose,” and more like one that “stayed here.”

Ultra-brief

This song is not about the instant of achieving something.
What it captures is the situation where the music keeps playing— a viewpoint taken from the middle of it all.
Certainty and doubt, momentum and hesitation coexist, and it moves forward without being sorted out.
It doesn’t point to a destination; it presents the state of “continuing” itself.

🎥 As usual, please watch the official YouTube video first.

🎬 Official Video Credits (official audio)
Title: The Ocean
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Album: “Houses of the Holy”
Release Year: 1973
Format: Official Audio
Publisher: Led Zeppelin Official YouTube Channel
Rights: ℗ Atlantic Recording Corporation
🎼 Two-line note
Placed late in the album, this track foregrounds the sense of a “space” where the performance itself keeps going.
It stays powerful without rushing to a conclusion, presenting the state of music continuing as it is.

Credits (official live footage)
Title: The Ocean
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Footage: Madison Square Garden show (July 1973)
Original Album: “Houses of the Holy”
Format: Official Video / HD
Publisher: Led Zeppelin Official YouTube Channel
Rights: ℗ Atlantic Recording Corporation
🎼Two-line note
1973—inside a live space that was rapidly growing larger, this footage captures the way the performance itself keeps pushing forward.
Compared with the studio take, the rawness and momentum stand out, making the song’s “space-first” character even clearer.

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Let’s organize the basics of the track

Basic Information

• Artist: Led Zeppelin
• Title: The Ocean
• Album: Houses of the Holy
• Release Year: 1973

“The Ocean” is placed at the very end of the album.
This position feels less like a simple closing statement and more like a place that spreads out the sound that has been flowing so far—and then passes it onward, as it is.

Its Role Within the Album

Houses of the Holy isn’t an album that puts unity front and center.
Rather, songs that point in different directions sit next to each other, each with its own independent face.
Within that spread, “The Ocean” seems to play a role not of tying everything together, but of affirming the state of being scattered.

It doesn’t try to gather things up, and it doesn’t present a clear conclusion.
It simply leaves the fact of “what has been played up to this point” right where it is.
That’s its stance.

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A song where the “space” comes forward more than any person

Why the Lyrics Don’t Lock in a Character

Even when listening, a specific character never rises clearly into view.
Rather than someone’s emotions or transformation being told, the place where the music is playing—the air of it—comes to the surface.

Because of that, I’ve come to listen to this song not as something to “understand,” but as something to simply “be there with.”

A Structure that Cuts Out the “Middle”

There’s no moment in the song that signals, “this is over.”
There are climactic swells, but they’re never treated as arrival points.
Everything is placed as something that is still in progress.

I now take this unorganized, unresolved state to be the core of “The Ocean.”

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The texture of the sound

Its strength isn’t fixed in one direction

The sound is never weak.
But that strength isn’t locked into a single direction.
There are moments when it steps forward, and moments where it leaves room to pull back.

So even when you focus on it, it doesn’t become suffocating, and even when it plays as part of a flow, it doesn’t feel out of place.
I feel that this softness is why the track remains usable for so long.

A role of lowering intensity near the end of the album

Although it’s placed at the end, this song doesn’t move in the direction of suddenly raising volume or density.
As a result, what remains after listening is less the feeling of being “wrapped up,” and more a sense that the album’s sound has naturally settled.

A song that doesn’t decide where the words should land

It moves forward without organizing emotion

Even if you follow the lyrics of “The Ocean,” there’s not much sense of emotion being gathered into one direction.
There is joy and uplift, certainly, but they aren’t fixed as affirmation, nor shown as an answer.

Instead, various fragments line up, each left unfinished—still in the middle.
That’s the impression it gives.

That’s why this song doesn’t leave behind the feeling of “I got it.”
Even after it ends, it doesn’t feel like something has ended.
That, I think, is one of its defining traits.

What remains is only the sense that time is passing

Where the lyrics point is not an emotional conclusion, but the fact that time continues.
Things happen, sound plays, people are there.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Each time I listen to this song, I feel like I’m returning—just a little—to the time in which music is playing.
It’s less like remembering something, and more like confirming: “it’s still going on.”

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How my own listening has changed

The comfort of a distance that doesn’t shrink

I’ve listened to it for a long time, but the distance between me and this song has never changed dramatically.
It doesn’t feel closer, and it doesn’t feel farther away.

I don’t think that’s because it fails to move emotion strongly, but because it stands in a steady position from the start.
Whenever I listen, it’s there at the same distance.
That stability is part of what this song has.

A sound that’s easy to place in everyday life

For me, “The Ocean” isn’t a song I choose when my feelings swing wildly.
Rather, it’s a sound that naturally arrives after something has come to a pause, or in the blank space before moving on.

You don’t need to concentrate on it—yet it also doesn’t become something you can completely ignore as background.
I think that “in-between” feeling is why it’s easy to place inside everyday life.

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Why it’s No.15

Its role within the Best 25

When I thought about how to treat this song within the Best 25, I first felt that it wasn’t something to place at the center.
Its role is different from songs that insist on themselves strongly, or songs that decide the flow.

But if you remove it, the overall sequence becomes oddly unsettled.
That’s where this song sits.

I place it as a connector of time between songs that generate forward momentum and songs that sink deep.
That is why No.15 was the right place.

Why I introduced it in this order

This position also felt natural in the order of introduction.
From here onward, the Best 25 gradually changes its character.
The list shifts from songs arranged mainly by momentum to songs that carry different viewpoints.

By placing “The Ocean” right before that switch, the outlines of the songs that come next become easier to see.
That’s why I chose this order.

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Why I placed this song at No.15

No.15 is a point where the overall flow of the Best 25 switches gears.
From here on, songs with perspectives beyond pure momentum increase little by little.
By placing “The Ocean” just before that, I thought it would make the contours of the songs that follow easier to see.