“The Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin answered a jab with "The Rain Song", the second track on Houses of the Holy, their fifth album, out in March 1973. George Harrison had grumbled to John Bonham that the band never wrote ballads, so Jimmy Page came up with one that runs past seven minutes, working out the melody at his home in Plumpton, England, on a mixing console he'd just installed, in a tuning that bends DADGAD into something even dreamier.

Its working title was "Slush", a joke about its mock-orchestral sweep, and John Paul Jones fills that sweep in with a Mellotron while Page plays a Danelectro and produces. Robert Plant wrote the words and sings them with a tenderness he has counted among his finest work on record.

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