(Credits: Far Out / Led Zeppelin)
Fri 27 March 2026 9:17, UK
Ever since the 1970s, Robert Plant has been the textbook example of what most rock singers are supposed to sound like.
Everyone had fawned over what Little Richard was doing in the 1950s and how The Beatles revolutionised harmony singing in the 1960s, but the minute that the needle dropped on the first Led Zeppelin record, Percy’s manic screams sent shivers up and down the spines of kids who wanted something heavier than The Rolling Stones. They would get their wish for the rest of the decade, but Plant felt that one of his best performances with Zeppelin came with ‘The Rain Song’.
Looking at where Zeppelin would go on their first four albums, it was always about forward progression. There had been plenty of acts that were looking to make something bluesy to fit the times, but every self-titled Zeppelin project was about making something new that they hadn’t heard, whether that was the folk-leaning cuts on their third outing or straight-up theatrical rock on something like ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
With those grand tracks under their belt, Houses of the Holy feels like an also-ran in their catalogue by default. They could still deliver brilliance whenever they recorded, but listening to ‘The Ocean’ as the closer of the album feels a little bit hollow when the last thing they put out was ‘When the Levee Breaks’.
While ‘The Rain Song’ is the ballad of the record, it actually manages to outdo ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in some respects. Whereas ‘Stairway’ had the entire build-up over eight minutes that felt like listening to a hero’s journey in song, ‘The Rain Song’ is far moodier, almost like travelling down into the depths of the ocean every time that Page hits those trademark slides down the guitar neck.
(Credits: Far Out / Dana Wullenwaber)
Since everything is a lot more muted in the mix, Plant’s vocals are front and centre for most of the track, fluctuating between his crooning and getting a little bit dramatic in his presentation. There are definitely more acrobatic performances in Zeppelin’s catalogue, but this is by far the most tasteful singing Plant had ever laid down.
Even years after Zeppelin dissolved, Plant considered ‘The Rain Song’ a landmark piece of his repertoire, telling Rolling Stone, “I’d say that on [Led Zeppelin’s] ‘Rain Song’ I sounded best. I’d reached a point where I knew that to get good I couldn’t repeat myself. The high falsetto screams had become quite a kind of calling card.”
Then again, there were always going to be limits on where that sound could go. When listening to Presence, a lot of Plant’s vocals either got traded in for his trademark scream again or got so buried in the mix that it was hard to parse out what he was saying half the time.
But that was by design. Plant never claimed to want to stay with one vocal sound for the rest of his life, and ‘The Rain Song’ was just another experiment in creating a different sonic world with his voice. Still, that world has been leaving a massive imprint on how singers approach ballads for decades.
How ‘The Rain Song’ became a Led Zeppelin classic
While much of the band’s discography can claim to be bolstered by important and impressive instrumentation, the group took things to a new level with ‘The Rain Song’. It’s a track deliberately written to challenge listeners and the band, which may be why Plant is in awe of it.
Since most of Zeppelin’s ballads were known to be folksy, ‘The Rain Song’ feels like it’s coming in from another dimension. While it’s easy to see what Robert Plant is doing with the melody, most people would be lost in the woods trying to figure out what Page is playing for most of the tune. There had been flirtations with tunings like open-D and open-C before, but you aren’t going to find this tuning in any other song in the band’s catalogue.
It’s an impressive feat that a song so purposefully off-kilter can still house some of Plant’s finest vocals. But that’s the mark of the band.
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