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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder where is the 2015 equivalent of Led Zeppelin?

They're not raw enough, but I think about the closest you'll get right now to the concept of Zep might be the Foo Fighters. It's real rock & roll, the musicians are talented, their front man is ultra-charismatic, and they consistently put out hit after hit. If you want a slightly less rock-ish option (which isn't remotely like Led Zeppelin but meets all the criteria except for specific music genre), it's hard to go wrong with Pearl Jam ... or any of Eddie Vedder's side projects.

To co-opt what someone else said, in order to find what you're looking for from the 90s, you kinda have to go look at bands from the 90s and pray they're still together.

From what I understand, Led Zep were by no means the opposite end of the spectrum from manufactured pop. They were assembled by Jimmy Page from industry professionals, plagiarised a lot, and operated largely as a shameless cash generation machine. And the results were fantastic, of course.

If there was a formula for their success, nobody has been able to repeat it.

I know they plagiarized some old blues stuff, but all musicians do to some extent, and those old blues tunes were forgotten then and would still be forgotten if Zep hadn't brilliantly rearranged them.

That's a tough one, even today I feel that Zep is as relevant as ever, so you can't really compare. But there is good modern music out there, but maybe it's apples and oranges comparing to Zep. Zep is still relevant!

I mentioned some of my current favorite artists in another post, but try Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) or Tim Hecker, these guys are doing crazy things today. Honestly, I was a Zep fan, still am a Zep fan and think that there is no comparison to Zep. But OPN and Hecker will blow you away much like Zep can blow you away, if you give them a chance. Just my opinion of course ;)

where is the 2015 equivalent of Led Zeppelin?

You could actually understand what Robert Plant was singing. The biggest problem with many of today's bands is that the words are usually unintelligible (often because music is being played loudly over them).

In contrast, I think part of the appeal of rap is that you can actually understand the words. You might not like them, but you can understand them. E.g. In Da Club by 50 Cent. Great beat, easily understood words.

Well, they're there but really hard to find unless you are lucky enough to live in a market with an independent, listener supported radio station such as KXT here in Dallas.

Indy recordings are not all good, sometimes they play some kinda crappy, pitchy local artists but at least it's not the record industry decreed crap everybody else plays. And there are some treasures out there.

Maybe try Wolfmother?

Edit: Obviously nowhere near the stature and influence of Led Zeppelin, but the sound might satisfy you in some ways.

Although they don't have the album release cadence of Led Zeppelin, perhaps Tool?

Maybe you only get a Zeppelin every couple of decades.

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