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🎧 Listen to This Article
This article is also available as a short audio narration, approximately three minutes long.
Based on the flow of the text, the narration traces the story of “Fool in the Rain”
and its sense of calm distance, through a rhythm slightly different from reading.
Feel free to listen before you read, or return to it after.
🇺🇸 English narration
🇯🇵 Japanese narration
🎸【Led Zeppelin Series】No.25
No.25 is “Fool in the Rain.”
Some readers may find this ranking a little surprising.
Led Zeppelin is usually associated with massive soundscapes, mythic scale, and overwhelming musicianship. This song sits at the farthest possible distance from that image.
Although it is placed at No.25 in the Best 25, it was the song I wanted to introduce first—as a doorway into the tracks that follow.
“Fool in the Rain” quietly shows that Zeppelin had reached a stage where they no longer needed to prove anything. This calmness becomes especially striking for listeners familiar with the band’s early or peak periods.
Ultra-brief summary
The protagonist waits, believing in a promise that ultimately is not kept. Time passes, and only expectation is left behind. Yet he does not blame the other person, nor does he place himself at the center of a tragedy. He accepts what happened and tries to understand it, thinking, “Perhaps I misread the situation.” The focus of the story is not whether love succeeds or fails, but the process of arriving at that understanding.
🎥 As always, please start with the official YouTube video.
🎬 Official video credits (official audio) Fool in the Rain (Remaster) Led Zeppelin Courtesy of Atlantic Records Album: In Through the Out Door (1979) 🎼 Two-line commentary One of the defining songs of Led Zeppelin’s later period, featuring a distinctive shuffle rhythm and a refined, almost urban arrangement. Despite being a gigantic rock band, it shows how they had acquired “space” and “groove” rather than relying on sheer force.
Basic song information
Release and position within the album
“Fool in the Rain” appears on the 1979 album In Through the Out Door.
During this late phase of the band, Zeppelin stepped away from the urgency of their early years, with creative control and musical interests more dispersed. That said, this did not diminish the overall quality of their work.
What comes through in this song is not uncertainty, but a sense of composed calm. It neither retraces past successes nor aggressively pushes for novelty. That balance gives the song its natural, unforced presence.
Themes and worldview
The protagonist stands on the side of inaction
The protagonist depicted here does not move the story forward. He makes no decisive choice, nor does he alter the situation. He simply exists within the passage of time.
What matters is that this state is not portrayed negatively. The disappointment, the possibility of misunderstanding, is not over-dramatized. Emotions are present, but they never dominate the story.
This sense of distance gives the song its distinctive stability. It never fully becomes a tragedy, yet it does not trivialize the experience either. Remaining in that middle ground is the song’s core.
Choosing to portray “the time when nothing happened”
Most of the song is built not around events, but around waiting. Waiting for someone, as time passes in the rain. Nothing improves during that time.
Yet it is precisely this absence of events that becomes the story. In contrast to the dramatic turns found in early Zeppelin, this song depicts stagnation itself. That perspective feels unique to this later period.
Core lyrics and interpretation
The uniqueness of an “unresolved” story
What always lingers for me when listening is that the story never truly lands anywhere.
The misunderstanding is not cleared up, the relationship is not repaired, and nothing changes dramatically.
In many rock songs, events trigger the next action—turning into anger, separation, or the search for something new.
“Fool in the Rain” chooses none of these paths.
What the protagonist ultimately gains is only a small realization: “Maybe I misread the situation.”
It is neither victory nor salvation.
Simply the result of accepting what happened as it was.
This refusal to neatly resolve the story keeps the song far from being a conventional breakup tale.
Why it does not turn into resentment
Another striking feature is that the story never moves toward blaming anyone.
Despite the broken promise, it does not accuse the other person of insincerity.
Questions of who was right or wrong are intentionally left ambiguous.
What the protagonist accepts is simply the fact that “I believed that to be true.”
This distance prevents emotions from swelling excessively, leaving the song with a lingering lightness.
The sense of distance created by the sound
Rhythm neutralizes emotion
If you only read the lyrics, you might expect a much heavier sound.
In reality, the performance maintains a lively, bouncing rhythm throughout.
This rhythm prevents the protagonist’s inner world from expanding beyond necessity.
The music does not amplify emotion; instead, it offers a vantage point slightly removed from the events.
Had this song been played with a dragging, weighty beat, it would have tipped into tragedy.
It does not—because from the outset, the sound design chooses not to become overly serious.
This song through the listener’s timeline
From my own experience in college
This is not a general observation, but my personal experience.
I listened to Led Zeppelin quite intensively during my college years, in a small old apartment room in Higashi-Matsubara, Setagaya.
At that time, my attention naturally gravitated toward sheer sonic power and dramatic scale.
Differences between songs mattered less than how overwhelming they felt.
Listening that way, “Fool in the Rain” inevitably faded into the background.
It is light, gentle in its development, and not the kind of song that burns itself into memory on first listen.
Its position revealed with time
Yet when I returned to it after some time had passed, the song appeared in an entirely different place.
A promise that fell through.
An expected event that never happened.
And the feeling that life nonetheless continues.
After living through experiences like these, the song’s calmness no longer sounds like weakness, but like the posture one takes after accepting what has happened.
Because it does not insist on meaning, meaning eventually catches up.
That quiet persistence may be why this song lingers.
Why it belongs in the Best 25
Why No.25?
This is not one of the band’s signature songs.
And yet, a Best 25 without it would feel oddly suffocating.
After a stretch of grandeur and tension, something is needed to let the air change.
“Fool in the Rain” fulfills that role perfectly.
Why start with this song?
Although ranked No.25, this was the song I wanted to introduce first—as an entry point to the ones that follow.
Beginning here allows us to share, naturally, the idea that “Led Zeppelin is not only about strength.”
A final line that makes you want to listen again
Passed over in youth, returning quietly with time.
Placing it at the start of the Best 25 subtly changes how the remaining 24 songs are heard.
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