10 Most Important Rock Albums Of All Time

As the '60s ended, rock was starting to get a little bit of an attitude. Once the hippie-centric acts started to slowly fade from view, there was a whole new generation brandishing fuzz boxes, bluesy chords, and some of the meanest screamers you had ever heard. On the other hand, no hard rock act has really come up with anything that Led Zeppelin didn't already do a thousand times better.

Though Zeppelin started life as a typical blues affair across most of their early records, their untitled fourth album is where they took a quantum leap from their beginnings. Compared to the other blues rock acts like the Yardbirds and ZZ Top, stuff like Rock and Roll and Black Dog feel like the Earth rumbling beneath your feet. Even when they do dip their toes back into the blues, their reinvention of everything on When the Levee Breaks makes this typical sad lament feel like the end of the world.

At the same time, there's no getting around Stairway to Heaven, whose massive journey across its 8 minute runtime set the standard for what all other hard rock acts should aspire to in their ballads. Zeppelin already were one of the biggest rock acts in the world at this point, but with this one album, they stepped into the greatest of all time slot.