Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin's fourth album carried no title, no band name, and no words at all on its cover, just four cryptic symbols, one chosen by each member, printed on the inner sleeve. It was a deliberate rebuke of critics who'd dismissed the band as hype after mixed reviews of Led Zeppelin III, and the music inside answered them definitively. Recorded between December 1970 and March 1971, largely at the Victorian country house Headley Grange using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, the album found Jimmy Page producing the band at the peak of its powers.

The record moves from the stop-start riff of "Black Dog" and the stomping "Rock and Roll" into folk-tinged detours like "The Battle of Evermore" before landing on "Stairway to Heaven," the eight-minute centerpiece that builds from acoustic guitar and recorder into one of rock's most famous extended solos. Manager Peter Grant refused to release it as a single, yet it became the most requested song in FM radio history anyway, a testament to the strength of album-oriented rock in the era.

Led Zeppelin IV topped the UK chart and spent 61 consecutive weeks on it, going on to sell more than 37 million copies worldwide and earning a 24-times platinum certification in the US, Diamond status many times over. It stands as the commercial and creative high point of the band's catalog, the record most responsible for cementing Led Zeppelin's reputation as one of the most influential groups in modern music.

This limited edition is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and digitally remastered, the definitive way to hear an album that needed no name to become one of the best selling records of all time.