1966 Rock Hit, Ranked Among 'Greatest Songs of All Time,' Initially Flopped-Then Changed Music History
Most people associate the chart-topping '60s single "Somebody to Love" with Jefferson Airplane, and with good reason. It was the legendary band's first major hit, after all, not to mention one of the first massively successful songs from the era-defining San Francisco music scene. But in fact, "Somebody to Love" wasn't originally a Jefferson Airplane song.
Written by Darby Slick after a breakup (and reportedly fueled by his frustrations with the free love movement of the time), "Somebody to Love" was first released in 1966 as a single by the Great Society, featuring Darby's sister-in-law Grace Slick on vocals, her husband Jerry Slick playing drums, and Darby on guitar. Unfortunately, the song didn't take the band very far, and before long, Great Society would break up anyway.
Darby started to become interested in exploring Indian music; around the same time, the already-established Jefferson Airplane asked Grace to join the band following the departure of their previous lead singer, Signe Toly Anderson, according to American Songwriter.
When Grace joined Jefferson Airplane, she didn't just bring her iconic vocal skills, she also brought two songs that would go on to be huge hits: "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love."
Unlike the Great Society's version, Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" shot up the charts, peaking at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June of 1967 and establishing the band as a force to contend with.
Even though Darby wasn't a member of Jefferson Airplane, since he wrote "Somebody to Love," the song's success was a boon for him, too.
"When [Slick] left to join the Airplane, it allowed me to actually start to study the Indian music full-time," Darby recalled in a 2021 interview. "Then, the money I got allowed me to study it for many years. So I went in to study 12 years nonstop, just absolutely full-time. For one of those years I practiced exercises for 12 hours a day, six days a week. It was just a total commitment to the classical music of northern India."
In the years since "Somebody to Love" first blew up, it's only grown in popularity. Rolling Stone ranked the track #279 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," and Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock declared it Jefferson Airplane's #1 song "because it drives harder than almost anything else they ever recorded," adding, "Slick checks in with her all-time greatest vocal (she originally cut the song with her pre-Airplane band the Great Society), and the hook is bigger and brighter than most of the band's psychedelic folk-outs."
Related: 1975 Soft Rock Classic, Originally Disliked by the Band, Became a Timeless Love Anthem
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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 4:53 PM.