Cover: Bettye Lavette, "Crazy" & "All My Love"

Speaking of Gnarls Barkley, soul singer Bettye Lavette takes their hit "Crazy" to new places by stripping down its production to a slinky nightclub number and really wrenching the vocal phrasing as wide open as she can. The result is quite fantastic. It goes from being a piece of unstoppable momentum, to one where you just hang on every word.



The last few years have seen Lavette on a tear, making up for lost time (look her up on Wikipedia.) One of the best examples of her power is what she does to "All My Love," probably the most-maligned song in the Led Zeppelin songbook. By transforming the tense synth they used on their recording with a much broader piano stroke, she lets the emotion pour into it, and while the song doesn't sound as mournful as it was originally recorded, it also doesn't sound as cold and cut off. Staggering.

Serious Contenders: Led Zeppelin, "Fool in the Rain"

Like previous examples of classic rock on this site, "Fool in the Rain" isn't the song you probably think of when someone says Led Zeppelin. No, it's not an epic, medieval hymn to Tolkien, nor is it an explosive psychedelic blues crunch. It's just a simple story set against a neat little looped riff, which curves up then laps down on itself. If it's not the greatest song they did, then it's certainly an excellent example of what they could do with their time. It's one of the bigger ear-worms they ever created (probably a lot easier and more fun to hum than "Stairway to Heaven" or "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You.") It's a really slick jam.

It also features some rad lyrics, a story about standing in the rain waiting for your dream girl, feeling utterly defeated and hopeless, until you realize you were waiting on the wrong damn block. That's what I like about this song's place in the Zeppelin canon. They often took their music to strange places, whether the desert sands of Kashmir, the pastoral past, into hippie fantasies and the inner workings of the mind... and the street corner. This isn't the song you think of when you think Led Zeppelin, but who else could have done it?