Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day

Jethro Tull are one of rock's great misfits — too progressive for rock, too rock for prog, too folk for anything, led by Ian Anderson on flute in a way that invited mockery and achieved greatness. Their 1970s run contains some of the most ambitious and peculiar music of the decade.

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day is one of their most lyrical moments — a gentle acoustic track about uncertainty and survival, carried by Anderson's voice at its most plaintive. The flute here serves the song rather than dominating it.

The "Jethro Tull won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance" story — beating Metallica — is one of rock history's most reliably cited absurdities. The band exists somewhere the categories don't reach.