What are the Robert Plant’s 10 best songs?

Today the singer turns 76, and we rescue the best of his career, both in Led Zeppelin and in his career as a soloist.

Without a doubt, Robert Plant is one of the best vocalists not only in rock, but also in the history of popular music.

He was part of another legend in itself, Led Zeppelin, along with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. And after the end of her band mother , during these last four decades as a soloist she has managed to maintain a mix of youthful exploration and aged wisdom, escaping the shadow of the group.

Today he turns 76 years old. And on rock radio we select the 10 best songs by Robert Plant, both in Led Zeppelin and as a soloist.

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Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)

Once Robert Plant provided evocative lyrics, inspired by his travels through southern Morocco, deep in the Sahara desert, where the road seemed to have no end, the seductive oriental flavor of “Kashmir” was complete. Although the song came to an end after eight and a half glorious minutes; Many were those who wanted it to continue forever. The majestic final results have continued to captivate Led Zeppelin fans. And attracting countless new ones to the band since then. So it is not surprising that the surviving members also consider “Kashmir” as one of their greatest achievements.

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Down to the Sea

Always exploring, always tasteful, Robert Plant’s best songs often find him searching for new musical combinations along with some kind of spiritual fulfillment. As an undercurrent of rumbling drums carries him forward; The singer shares some of what he’s learned on his journey (“Life’s a big tambourine / The more you shake it, the better it seems”) as he continues to seek higher ground: “That’s where I want to be / This is where it all comes from”.

Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)

There are many memorable riffs in the Led Zeppelin canon, but the ones Jimmy Page sculpted for “Whole Lotta Love” might be the best. And as if Page’s prowess wasn’t enough, Robert Plant delivers one of his most evocative vocal performances. Blues and longing in the verses, underlining the charisma and lust factor elsewhere. In fact, it’s arguable that Robert Plant has established himself as a sex symbol (y) with orgasmic vocal babbles over a psychedelic bridge filled with disorienting, tornado-like guitar effects.

In the Mood

The standout track from Robert Plant’s second solo album proved beyond a doubt that he had found his own voice outside the enormous shadow of Led Zeppelin. It’s also one of the best songs in the world to play if you’re stuck in a traffic jam and feel your temper flare. The smooth drums, calm rhythms, airy keyboards and ice-clean guitars of “In the Mood” were a world away from the typical sound of his former band. However, the sense of nostalgia that marked his work within Zeppelin was still clearly present, mixed with the equal doses of confidence and good taste that would become the cornerstones of his impressive solo career.

Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

“Stairway to Heaven” is so ingrained in rock DNA that, ironically, it is often overlooked. We’ve heard these songs so many times in so many formats over so many years, that they’ve become cliches and punchlines, the kind of song you scream over during a shitty band’s encore when you’re trying to get a cheap laugh. “Stairway to Heaven” is not just a great rock song; It is the great rock song, it cannot be exaggerated if it deserves it. Although Led Zeppelin was never really classified as a progressive rock band, this is undoubtedly the most “progressive” and technically challenging of the band.

City Don’t Cry (Page & Plant)

Fifteen years after they ended their joint explorations of world music in Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reunited for an album that found them traveling to exotic locations like Morocco to work with local musicians to create new songs. One of the most impressive results was this agitated but somehow calming lullaby, which found Plant’s voice blending fantastically with the chants of his new friends.

Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)

The first sound you hear on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album is Jimmy Page’s guitar preparing for action. It’s a captivating start to Led Zeppelin’s best, most popular and, at the time, most confident album. And from the moment Robert Plant steps in with an a cappella promise, “Black Dog” sounds like very few songs in the band’s catalog. Of course, the song has nothing to do with a dark-colored canine; Like most Led Zeppelin songs, it is about sex (according to legend, a black Labrador prowled the studio during the sessions). Everything about “Black Dog,” the riff, the moans, drips with hot, nasty, dirty lust.

Angel Dance

Even after all those years, Robert Plant continued to push forward into new musical territories with youthful enthusiasm. He consistently broke up creative and commercially successful bands in the 2000s so he could pursue whatever new sound bounced around in his head. For Band of Joy, that meant teaming up with Buddy Miller to put a distinctive folk/world-music stamp on a wide variety of his favorite songs, including the majestic stomp of this Los Lobos cover.

Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)

“Dazed and Confused” has a complicated history. In 1967, the obscure folk singer Jake Holmes wrote and recorded a stripped-down song with that title. Which includes the familiar climbing bass line that runs through the entire Led Zeppelin song. That same year, Holmes opened for the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page, who reworked the song to fit the band’s turned-up-to-11 live sets. After the Yardbirds broke up, Page formed Led Zeppelin and took the plugged version of “Dazed and Confused.” And he changed most of Holmes’ lyrics, and some of his structure, with him. Regardless of the song’s copyright (Page receives sole credit, which has been disputed by Holmes), it is a masterful album. Highlighted by Page’s electric solo, all power, bravado and bomb dropping.

Another Tribe

With its large tribal drums at the forefront of the mix, spinning strings and dramatic acoustic guitar movements; “Another Tribe” could almost be considered the older brother of Zeppelin’s “Four Sticks.” The difference, of course, is that Robert Plant continues to explore more subtle singing styles, as he has done in recent years, instead of crying like a banshee. This mature and refined approach helps give this song a more contemplative and melancholic point of view.

Robert Plant (short bio)

Robert Anthony Plant CBE (born 20 August 1948) is an English singer and songwriter. He was the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Led Zeppelin from its founding in 1968 until their breakup in 1980; since then he has had a successful solo career, sometimes collaborating with other artists such as Alison Krauss. Regarded by many as one of the greatest singers in rock music, he is known for his flamboyant persona and raw stage performances.

Plant was born and brought up in the West Midlands area of England, where after leaving grammar school he briefly trained as a chartered accountant before leaving home at 16 years old to concentrate on singing with a series of local blues bands, including Band of Joy with John Bonham. In 1968, he was invited by Peter Grant and Jimmy Page to join The Yardbirds, which Grant and Page were attempting to keep going. The new version of The Yardbirds changed their name to Led Zeppelin, and from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s the band enjoyed considerable success.

Plant developed a compelling image as a charismatic rock-and-roll front man, comparable to other 70’s contemporaries such as Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Roger Daltrey of the Who, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. After Led Zeppelin dissolved in 1980, Plant continued to perform and record continuously on a variety of solo and group projects. His first two solo albums, Pictures at Eleven (1982) and The Principle of Moments (1983), each reached the top ten on the Billboard albums chart.

With his band The Honeydrippers he scored a top-ten singles hit with a remake of “Sea of Love”, which featured former Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page on guitar. Solo album Now and Zen (1988) was certified 3× Platinum and is Plant’s biggest-selling solo album to date. In the 1990s, another reunion project called Page and Plant released two albums and earned a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1998 for “Most High”.

In 2007, Robert Plant began a collaboration with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, releasing the album Raising Sand, which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2009 and produced the hit song “Please Read the Letter”, which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year the same year. In 2010, he revived the Band of Joy (which shared its name with an early band he performed with in the 1960s), and in 2012 formed a new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, followed by a reunion with Alison Krauss in 2019.

In 1995, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked Plant as one of the 100 best singers of all time (2008); and he was the top pick for the greatest lead singer in a 2011 readers poll. Hit Parader named Plant the “Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time” (2006). Plant was named one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR. In 2009, Plant was voted “the greatest voice in rock” in a poll conducted by UK classic rock radio station Planet Rock. Billboard ranked him number 4 on their list of The 50 Greatest Rock Lead Singers of All Time (2023).