Robert Plant Named the Song He Would Need an ‘Iron Lung’ to Sing: ‘A Hell of a Challenge’
In Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant whined, crooned, howled, and wailed his way through more than one song. He performed vocal acrobatics that would be a challenge for many singers. Despite this, he said that his biggest challenge as a singer was a song he sang with Alison Krauss. He shared why the song was such a difficult task to take on.
Robert Plant said there’s one song that he found most difficult to sing
In 2007, Plant and Krauss released their Grammy-winning album, Raising Sand. On it, they covered the Dillard & Clark song “Polly,” re-recorded as “Polly Come Home.” Their version was a gorgeous, slowed-down cover of the original. It was also a huge challenge for Plant.
“It’s just the most difficult piece of music to sing at the tempo that we sang it at,” he said on his podcast Digging Deep (via Ultimate Classic Rock). “It’s one of the toughest calls I’ve had, apart from my audition in the Yardbirds.”
The song’s tempo is languorous, which is what made it challenging to sing.
“It’s such a remarkable feel and it’s such a beautiful song,” Plant said. “The song itself is just, it’s so poignant. And it’s so slow. So the very opening line of the song, in my chest, my lungs, my vocal cords, in my sense of timing … It was, ‘How am I gonna get these words right to the end of that bar without collapsing?’ It was just such a beautiful lilt.”
He noted that he loved the song, but it wasn’t one he could sing every day.
“So this is the guy that sang ‘Immigrant Song,’ he’s just gonna go and sing this song here where I need an iron lung to give me a little more air to get the song out,” he said. “It’s just such a great song, but the tempo… it was so languid, it was magnificent. But it was a hell of a challenge.”
Robert Plant said his voice no longer sounds the same as it did on early Led Zeppelin songs
Over the years, Plant’s musical style has changed greatly, from rock ‘n’ roll to folk and Americana. He’s also switched up his style of singing.
“I know that the full, open-throated falsetto that I was able to concoct in 1968 carried me through until I was tired of it,” he said, per NME. “Then that sort of exaggerated personality of vocal performance morphed and went somewhere else.
He’s still capable of this kind of singing, but it’s not often in his repertoire.
“But as a matter of fact, I was playing in Reykjavík, in Iceland, about three years ago, just before COVID,” he said. “It was Midsummer Night and there was a festival, and I got my band and I said, ‘OK, let’s do ‘Immigrant Song.” They’d never done it before. We just hit it, and bang — there it was. I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I could still do that.'”
We wish he’d sing it more often
While we don’t want to see Plant in an iron lung, we’d love to hear him cover “Polly Come Home.” On it, his voice is mournful and soft; it sounds little like his voice in Led Zeppelin, but therein lies its beauty. He sings achingly slowly, and Krauss’ backing vocals are sweet and haunting. It’s a different side of Plant than what many people might know, but it’s worth listening to, especially knowing how much work went into performing the song.
