“Heartbreaker” by Led Zeppelin

Flip Led Zeppelin II over and "Heartbreaker" is the first thing to come roaring out, a swaggering, distorted riff from Jimmy Page that sounds built to knock the plaster off the walls. All four members share the writing credit, and they cut it on the run, at A&R Recording and Atlantic Studios in New York while crisscrossing North America on their second tour, with Eddie Kramer engineering and Page producing.

It's heavy rock pushed to the brink, climbing through key changes in the third verse, and then, a couple of minutes in, the band simply drops out and leaves Page alone, pulling off a 46-second solo that sounds made up on the spot, because it was. Rolling Stone later placed it among its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and Chuck Klosterman heard sludge metal in it, a year before Black Sabbath.

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