[Led Zeppelin IV] by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin's fourth album has no title on the cover, just four symbols, one picked by each member, and it came out on Atlantic on 8 November 1971. Jimmy Page produced it, and the band recorded it between December 1970 and February 1971, mostly in the rambling country house Headley Grange, with work at Olympic Studios too. After Led Zeppelin III drew lukewarm reviews, the untitled sleeve was a shrug at the critics: let the music do the talking.

It talks loud. The loose, informal setting let Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham try songs every which way, and the record ranges from the stop-start swagger of "Black Dog" and the full-tilt boogie of "Rock and Roll", with Ian Stewart pounding the piano, to the misty folk of "The Battle of Evermore", with guest singer Sandy Denny. "Going to California" is a gentle daydream, "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Four Sticks" strut and pound, and the album ends with "When the Levee Breaks", the one cover, a Memphis Minnie blues turned into a monstrous, thundering hard rock stomp.

And then there's "Stairway to Heaven", eight minutes that climb from a delicate hush to a blazing, full-band climax. The album was an instant hit with critics and fans alike and became the band's best-selling record, at more than 37 million copies worldwide.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.