Background and career
Robert Anthony Plant (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 break-up 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 raw stage performances and his powerful, wide-ranging voice.
Plant was born and raised in the West Midlands area of England. On leaving grammar school he briefly trained as a chartered accountant, before leaving home aged 16 to concentrate on singing with a series of local blues bands, including Band of Joy with drummer John Bonham. In 1968 he was invited by manager Peter Grant and guitarist Jimmy Page to join the Yardbirds, which Grant and Page were attempting to keep going after some of its members had left. The new version of the Yardbirds, with Plant, changed their name to Led Zeppelin and, from the late 1960s until their disbandment in 1980, had international success.
Plant is a charismatic rock 'n' roll frontman, comparable to '70s contemporaries such as Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and Roger Daltrey of the Who. 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 studio albums, Pictures at Eleven (1982) and The Principle of Moments (1983), each reached the top ten on the US Billboard 200.
With his rock and roll band the Honeydrippers he scored a top-ten hit single in 1984 with a cover version of Phil Phillips' 1959 song "Sea of Love", which featured former Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page on guitar. Plant's fourth solo studio album Now and Zen (1988) was certified 3× Platinum and is his 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, Plant began a collaboration with American bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, releasing their debut studio 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, and in 2012 formed a new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, followed by a reunion with Alison Krauss in 2021.
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 classic rock radio station Planet Rock. Billboard ranked him number four on their list of The 50 Greatest Rock Lead Singers of All Time (2023).
