Song 180: “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, Part One, The Song Remains the Same

Andrew Hickey· Host0:00

[singing] A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, by Andrew Hickey. Song 180, Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin. Part one, the song remains the same. Before we begin, this episode contains some mild mentions of mental health problems, alcohol abuse, and violence. If those things are likely to upset you, you may want to check the transcript instead of listening. One of the biggest changes to the way popular music was marketed from the mid-'60s onwards is the new emphasis that was put on performers who also wrote their own material. There had, of course, always been performers who wrote, particularly in the blues and country genres, where the smaller labels that put out records by new artists wanted the copyright in new songs as much as they wanted the rights to recording, but in every genre to at least some extent. And we've looked at plenty of artists in recent episodes who didn't write all their own material. Bands like The Turtles, The Monkees, or The Byrds, and most of the Motown artists, were at least as known for interpretations of other people's songs as for writing their own. But it was still the case that, in large part because of the promotion of Lennon and McCartney as songwriters as well as performers, and of Bob Dylan as a performer of his own material, as the '60s drew on, a key signifier of authenticity in popular music, a fraught concept at the best of times, was whether the performer wrote the songs they were performing. And so there grew to be a