Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band. Formed in 1968 in London, the group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, drummer John Bonham and bassist John Paul Jones. With their heavy, guitar-driven blues-rock sound, Led Zeppelin are regularly cited as one of the progenitors of heavy metal and hard rock, even though the band's individualistic style drew from many sources. Zeppelin did not release songs from their albums as singles in the United Kingdom, as they preferred to develop the concept of "album-oriented rock".

The band have sold over 300 million albums worldwide,including 111.5 million certified units in the United States, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time, as well as the second best selling band of all time in the United States, only behind The Beatles. They have had all of their original studio albums reach the top 10 of the Billboard album chart in the US, with six reaching the number one spot. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the '70s" and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history. Similarly, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame described the band as being "as influential in that decade [70s] as The Beatles were in the prior one."

Led Zeppelin remain one of the most bootlegged artists in the history of rock music. In August 1999, the band topped the list of Britain's most bootlegged musicians with 384 bootleg titles, compiled by the Anti-Piracy Unit of British Phonographic Industry.

Stairway to Heaven" released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's untitled fourth studio album (usually referred to as Led Zeppelin IV). The song, running almost eight minutes, is composed of several sections, which increase in tempo and volume as the song progresses. The song begins as a slow acoustic-based folk song accompanied by recorders, before electric instrumentation is introduced.
The final section is a high-tempo hard rock section highlighted by an intricate guitar solo by Page. Plant's own explanation of the lyrics was that it "was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all the time without giving back any thought or consideration. The first line begins with that cynical sweep of the hand ... and it softened up after that.

The song, often considered one of the greatest rock songs of all-time, was placed at number 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was the most requested song on FM radio stations in the United States in the 1970s, despite never having been officially released as a single there. In November 2007, through download sales promoting Led Zeppelin's Mothership release, "Stairway to Heaven" hit #37 on the UK Singles Chart.