Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” has my vote for best rock n’ roll song ever, and that answer has never changed. Don’t even come to me with some calculatedly cred-oozing vote like Radiohead’s “National Anthem”—there was nothing calculated about what happened the first time I heard “Immigrant Song” when I was ten or eleven: my body became covered in goosebumps, and I experienced a little something they call a “fear boner,” and I had an accident in my pants. Before Robert Plant even started wailing. Which was at the :10 mark.
Since then, my ability to drop “Immigrant Song” into conversations that have nothing to do with music has become nothing short of startling. By which I mean obnoxious as hell. I don’t care if you’re asking me about whether you should buy lawn furniture off Craigslist, the answer is “Immigrant Song.” For years IS references, if you will, were not just off-topic but off-millennium.
But lately, with this Z-Trip mashup with Public Enemy…
and especially with this thunderous remake by Trent Reznor and Karen O (with a dark, bizarre mini-movie/trailer by David Fincher) for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”…
“Immigrant Song” is once again, at least for one last holiday movie season, timely. It’s been playing in my head a lot. Which might be why I heard even my office bathroom towel dispenser singing it to me.
(A super special thanks to super talented art director Ashleigh for Plantifying the video above.)
