235. Song Nos. 3,498 and 3,499: “Fool in the Rain”
Kaia: From the Land of Ice and Snow: The Songs of Led Zeppelin, 2010; Led Zeppelin: In Through the Out Door, 1979

I have loved this song for almost as long as I’ve loved Led Zeppelin, but it still took this revisit with “Fool in the Rain” for me to realize that it’s probably why Jens Lekman’s Calypso party album Life Will See You Now emerged as my favorite of his records after last year’s insatiable tear through one delicious newly discovered discography: With almost four decades between them, that album and this song make romantic rejection and wounded pride sound so good in all the same vaguely but distinctly tropical ways that I find absolutely irresistible. (Their shared Swedish lineage, with this song being part of the In Through the Out Door recording sessions at ABBA’s appropriately Stockholm-based studio, is a bonus treat that unexpectedly helps this purely personal association find some real-world legs to stand on.)

Even for the band that’s just as likely to seize upon their lyrics as a vehicle of foreplay as an opportunity to casually drop some sweet Lord of the Rings references, this track sounds like nothing else Zep released before or since (the latter, to be honest, is a truth provably hastened along by this being their last studio album before Bonzo died not even two years after its recording). I love rock ‘n’ roll Zeppelin and bluesier Zeppelin and balladeering Zeppelin, so of course I’m going to love heartbroken island Zeppelin too, but this late-career anomaly born of an unusually forward-thinking frontman insisting that the band needs to embrace different sounds to stay relevant is unabashedly one of my favorite songs ever, not just of this band’s but, like, in the entirety of recorded music.

Hopelessly romantic and reeling from freshly absorbed rejection in equal measures, “Fool in the Rain” could have been bogged down by off-putting desperation, but the self-awareness of the ur-ghosted juxtaposed over a nimbly upbeat and downright danceable tune make it so much better than lesser songs’ attempts at bringing the same emotional state to life by giving it glimpses into an impactful, dimensional story. And not for nothing, but the rich imagery of a cruelly absent partner paired with being caught alone in the rain amidst plans gone to ruin despite your all-in efforts adds some very literal insult to injury that only makes it easier to personalize for its tangible heft.

There’s a lot of heaviness to this song, honestly, owing to the weight of ecstatic anticipation finding itself unexpectedly and heartlessly thwarted. But there’s so much character and complexity here that it’s all proportionally supported and makes for a richer emotional experience overall, elevating an ego-bruiser of a realization to something that feels, implied by an increasingly developed melody, not unlike finding the growth in life’s slammed doors.