The female singer Robert Plant wanted on a Led Zeppelin album: “That little lady ought to come and sing”

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The female singer Robert Plant wanted on a Led Zeppelin album: “That little lady ought to come and sing”

(Credits: Far Out / surrealuv)

Mon 29 December 2025 11:25, UK

It’s hard to ignore Led Zeppelin as one of the more macho bands of the 1970s. Aside from Robert Plant’s penchant for a blouse and the kind of conditioned hair to make L’Oreal blush, the band were a quartet pulsating with machismo.

Their rock anthems chugged like a freight train, the subjects were steeped in the basest of human emotions, and their music became sport anthems with only a small side-step. They were, for all intents and purposes, music for boys in so many ways. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the songs couldn’t have been improved with a female touch.

The band, of course, appealed to everybody, and that certainly wasn’t guided by sex or gender, but it would have been great to see a female singer bring a new angle to proceedings. There was only one song in which the group welcomed a female vocalist, but Robert Plant would have welcomed another.

In 1977, Stevie Nicks was at the height of her fame. Fleetwood Mac had just released their eleventh studio album, Rumours, which gave birth to top ten singles such as ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Don’t Stop’, ‘You Make Loving Fun’ and ‘Dreams’. By then, Nicks was already one of the most celebrated female vocalists on the rock scene, with Robert Plant inviting her to appear on the next Led Zeppelin album.

Having been spotted by guitarist Jimmy Page back in the late ’60s, Plant had helped establish Zeppelin as the UK’s premiere hard rock outfit. Following the release of their platinum-selling album Presence, the band embarked on yet another stadium concert tour of North America, breaking their own attendance record with an appearance at the Silverdome arena on April 30th, where 76,229 people were present.

A few months later, in July 1977, Plant sat down with Mark Ginsberg of Interview Magazine to discuss his return to the stage after being involved in a car accident in Greece. The crash left him battered, bruised, and unable to tour. When asked what he’d been listening to at home, he replied: “Uh, I like Little Feat, Fleetwood Mac, obviously. That little lady ought to come and sing on one of our albums. If she were to come sing on one of our albums — it would…What’s her name? — Stevie…”

Plant went on to clarify that Nicks would have to collaborate with Led Zeppelin, not the other way around. When asked if the member of Led Zeppelin would ever consider performing with other artists, he said: “Well, no, I think it would only be impromptu.”

To bring Nicks’ vocals on to a Led Zeppelin album would have been a magnetic moment. But Plant believes the work would be light-hearted in nature: “On other albums maybe just guesting for a track—on a very light-hearted level. I can’t see any serious turn one way or another. We just enjoy playing with each other. I wouldn’t like to go and sing with anybody else at all.”

Sadly, Robert Plant and Stevie Nicks never got around to singing together. Hady they, their collaboration might have sounded a bit like Plant’s Raising Sand album with country singer Alison Krauss. You can revisit one of our favourite cuts from that record below.