Robert Plant has taken a hard look at his own past, calling his vocals on one song “horrific” and singling out two tracks he would rather see cast to the dustbin of time. In conversation with, the Led Zeppelin singer said his early attempt to sound tough was not the answer he once thought it was.
Plant said that when Led Zeppelin were making Led Zeppelin III, he “realised that tough, manly approach to singing I’d begun on [the 1966 track with former band Listen] ‘You Better Run’ wasn’t really what it was all about at all.” He said he had been using gravel in his voice to add grit and determination, but that the method eventually felt “a little bit silly.”
The comments land as a pointed self-assessment from a performer whose band burst onto the music scene in 1969 and went on to become one of rock’s most influential acts. Plant, one-quarter of Led Zeppelin, is presented here as unusually willing to turn the criticism inward, not just toward the songs but toward the way he sang them.
The friction in his account is plain. He is not dismissing the era that made him famous, but he is also not protecting it. By calling one performance “horrific” and backing away from the voice he once built around toughness, Plant is saying that the image he chased as a younger singer was never quite the point. That leaves his most interesting verdict on his own history in place: the lesson arrived while the band was already making perhaps its most experimental album, and he has carried it ever since.
