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🎧 Listen to the narration
This article is also available as a short audio narration, approximately three minutes long.
Following the flow of the text, it traces the sharp immediacy and forward-driving momentum
of No.16, “Immigrant Song.”
Feel free to listen before reading, or return to it afterward as a way of reconfirming the song’s presence.
🇺🇸 English narration
🇯🇵 Japanese narration
🎸【Led Zeppelin Series】No.16: “Immigrant Song”
No.16 is “Immigrant Song.”
When people talk about Led Zeppelin, it’s rare for this song to go unmentioned.
It’s short, it’s sharp, and with that very first cry, the whole scene snaps into focus.
In that sense, this track feels like something that requires no explanation.
At the same time, when arranging a “Best 25,” deciding where to place it is surprisingly difficult.
It’s simply too iconic, and too complete.
It’s extremely direct—and very short.
Its perfection is beyond doubt, but within a ranked list it demands a slightly different kind of handling than many other songs.
Ultra-Short Summary
What this song depicts is a group leaving their homeland and moving toward a new land.
Alongside excitement and confidence, there is also instability and tension.
The story is presented mid-motion, and no result or ending is given.
So the song captures not “the core of an event,” but the state of movement itself.
🎥 As always, please watch the official YouTube video first.
🎬 Official Video Credit (Official Audio)
Title: Immigrant Song (Remaster)
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Release: ‘Mothership’
Format: Official Remastered Audio (Official Audio)
Rights: ℗ Atlantic Recording Corporation / WEA International
Two-line note
A hard rock landmark defined by Norse-myth imagery and a slicing vocal cry.
The remaster brings the riff’s weight and the rhythm section’s force into even sharper focus.
🎬 Official Video Credit (Official Footage)
Title: Immigrant Song
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Footage: Live performance (1972)
Official: Published on Led Zeppelin’s official YouTube channel
🎼 Two-line note
A signature track powered by mythic imagery and Robert Plant’s piercing high-register shout.
This early-’70s live performance captures the band at the moment their scale began to turn truly monumental.
Let’s整理 the basic information for this track
About the song covered here
- Artist: Led Zeppelin
- Title: Immigrant Song (Remaster)
- Album: Led Zeppelin III
- Release year: 1970
This song is placed at the very beginning of the album, pulling the listener to another place in an instant.
From the moment it starts, the situation appears immediately—and motion is presented before explanation.
That clarity is one of the most readable characteristics in Led Zeppelin’s catalog.
Basic context
“Immigrant Song” opens the 1970 album Led Zeppelin III.
The moment playback begins, the situation arrives before any explanation.
That placement expresses the song’s character extremely well.
The album itself does not converge into a single direction.
Intensity and quiet, outward impulse and inward gaze coexist.
Within that mixture, “Immigrant Song” feels less like a confession of the album’s inner world and more like a switch—one that changes the room’s air all at once.
“Situation” comes forward more than “character”
This song does not describe a specific person’s inner life or transformation.
The focus is placed entirely on the situation itself.
So rather than identifying with one individual, the listener is positioned to observe an event already in progress—from a slight distance.
That sense of distance keeps the song sharp.
At the same time, it also prevents emotion from swelling too far—at least, that’s how it feels to me.
Structure as sound
The composition is extremely organized.
A repeating riff, a clear rhythm, and a stripped-down progression.
Rather than small changes, forward propulsion itself takes the lead.
As a result, the sound asserts itself strongly, yet the listener’s attention doesn’t scatter.
Only the sensation of moving forward remains.
This “lack of hesitation” is a fairly unusual quality even within Led Zeppelin’s songbook.
The choice not to state the outcome
As a narrative, “Immigrant Song” is remarkably decisive.
Only the process is presented, and what awaits beyond it is never stated.
In this Led Zeppelin series, I’ve noticed there are strangely many songs that share this kind of approach.
Is it victory, collision, or exhaustion?
Those evaluations are placed outside the song from the start.
So what remains after listening is not emotional closure, but the feeling of having briefly surveyed a situation.
Because of that distance, the song’s intensity never becomes excessive, and its sharpness stays intact.
That’s how I receive it.
My personal distance from the song
I’ve listened to this track for a long time, but my impression of it has never changed dramatically.
Whenever I play it, it rises with almost the same outline—and passes by at the same speed.
That is not a bad thing.
If anything, it’s proof that the song has settled into an extremely complete form.
Still, it isn’t the kind of song that shifts its expression in response to my own changes over time.
That feeling remains, too.
Why No.16?
After reconsidering, I placed this song at No.16.
The reason is simple: it didn’t feel like the kind of song that naturally rises just because it’s highly praised, nor the kind that should be pushed back because I feel distance from it.
Its symbolic power is immense.
Its completeness is unquestionable.
But it isn’t a song you sink into for a long time—it’s a song with the power to switch the flow instantly.
Receiving its strength honestly, while placing it where that strength works most naturally—
that’s how I arrived here.
A song for reconfirmation
For me, “Immigrant Song” is not a track I return to in order to dig up new meanings again and again.
Rather, it’s a sound I revisit at certain milestones to confirm: “it’s here,” “it hasn’t changed.”
It isn’t the kind of song whose impression wavers, or whose distance gradually closes over time.
Even so, the moment it hits, the situation rises—and the air in the room switches. Always with the same outline.
Because of that nature, I’d rather not place it at the center, but keep it as something that changes the flow at key moments.
For me, that relationship felt the most natural.
In closing
“Immigrant Song” is easy to explain—and yet, if you explain it too much, its outline dulls.
It’s iconic, highly complete, and everyone can share the same image immediately.
And precisely because of that, if you push the evaluation too strongly, it can pull you away from the sound itself.
This song has a sensation that comes before understanding: the feeling that a situation has risen into view.
I wanted to place it where that sensation works naturally within the relationships between other songs.
That’s the conclusion this time.
One more introduction—Greta Van Fleet!
About ten years ago, I heard this song again by chance and was surprised.
It wasn’t Robert Plant, but the voice and the performance felt remarkably similar. For a moment I thought, “Is this Led Zeppelin??”
It was “Immigrant Song” performed by Greta Van Fleet—the one linked in the image below.
If you’ve never heard it, please give it a listen.
A contrast with Led Zeppelin’s official version
In Led Zeppelin’s official recording,
the sound itself carries an immovable weight,
as if each note pins time into place.
In contrast, this cover makes the song feel
like something moving once again.
🎤 Greta Van Fleet context
Why are they compared to Led Zeppelin?
Greta Van Fleet is compared to Led Zeppelin
not simply because they sound similar.
They unconsciously inherit the language of an era
when rock music was still played with the whole body.
This cover makes that especially clear.
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