Nicknamed the “Golden God”, Robert Plant is one of the most influential vocalists of his generation and his singing was a crucial inspiration for many singers who followed in his style. He is consistently featured on lists of the greatest singers of all time, but in his opinion, there are many vocalists who are actually better than him and he once named two of them.
2 singers Robert Plant said were better than him
The two singers mentioned by Plant that, in his opinion, were better than him were Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Jeff Buckley, both who sadly died in the 1990s. “Both you’ve mentioned, two spectacular vocalists. I mean, both whom had much better chops than me. I mean, real great, great singers. (But) I just get into songs and live them out, which is a different thing, you know. I think that’s true, if everything else I said wasn’t true, that’s really true.”
“But I mean, Jeff Buckley’s voice, I was playing with Jimmy in the mid-90s when he had been working with an Egyptian ensemble and we played in a festival in Switzerland. Jeff Buckley was playing and we went to see him. It was mind altering, his voice was spectacular singing and so much conviction. The thing is, when there’s an adamance about putting a point over with the singers, when you can say like the woman I mentioned earlier, Oum Kalthoum, who inspired me for that (solo) track ‘Slow Dancer.'”
“I mean, she could set the world on fire just by holding a note for a minute while her orchestra just stood on a b-flat and then she would just drop her hand and Egypt would burst. I mean, there’s so much tension and so much beauty in these singers. All I do, I just get into great songs. I knew Freddie (Mercury) quite well, he was a wonderful guy. We used to sit and talk about what we’re gonna do when our voices were gone, you know (laughs). No, no (we never heard his voice go),” Robert Plant said in an interview with Q104 in 2018 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Why no one can sing Queen songs like Freddie did according to Robert Plant
Robert Plant has always been a fan of Queen and Freddie Mercury, whom he considered one of the greatest vocalists of all time. When the singer sadly died in the early 1990s, the band organized the benefit show, Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, in which Plant took part. Besides performing Led Zeppelin‘s “Thank You”, he also sang two Queen songs live: “Innuendo” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”.
“They didn’t come from the Blues, they didn’t come from Rock and Roll. Obviously, with Freddie’s charisma and stuff they came from much more of a theatrical area of popular music. It’s impossible, absolutely impossible to fill the boots of Freddie Mercury because he was so unique. But he was very sincere, very genuine, much larger than life. (…) He was a sweet guy, great voice. A tribute and testament to him, which a lot of people won’t click and understand. A lot of people are changing the keys to these songs because they just can’t do it Freddie”.
Robert Plant continued:
“Freddie sang all these songs originally and he sang them better than we gonna sing them. He sang them in the correct keys, he sang them with confidence. He sang them really, really well. His personality vocally and his whole projection we can’t capture. The real thing about today is that he is not here,” Robert Plant told MTV (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
The Queen frontman was a big fan of Zeppelin and once said he wrote “Innuendo” inspired by Plant’s band. In fact, he had stated that Robert was his favorite singer.
“‘Innuendo’ apparently was a sort of tipping the hat to ‘Kashmir’. So it’s about the desert, the moon, the stars and stuff. So it’s right up my street. Freddie said they’d written it as a tribute to Led Zeppelin, but I couldn’t get my head around the words. I tried to learn them on holiday in Morocco, but I ended up with a huge lyric sheet taped to the stage,” Robert told Classic Rock in 2022.
Jeff Buckley reportedly sang “Whole Lotta Love” moments before his death
Curiously, Jeff Buckley’s father, Tim Buckley was a big inspiration for Plant, especially in the early days of his career as he told VH1 program Storytellers, before covering “Song to The Siren”.
“We were talking earlier about lyrics and beautiful lyrics. That particular period that we were dwelling upon this evening, partly, in fact definitely was a time for prolific writing. Recently, not long ago, we lost one of the better, most beautiful caucasian singers, Jeff Buckley.”
“Sadly way, way out to lose such a talent, such a heart. His father was a great influence. Tim Buckley really influenced me when I was getting there, going to America and checking it out. The lyrics on this next song are probably some of the more beautiful I’ve ever heard in my life. This is a song called ‘Song to the Siren’,” Robert Plant said in 2002 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
What happened to Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley was a big fan of the band and was extremely happy when he had the chance to meet Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. According to one of his roadies, Keith Foti, moments before his death, Jeff entered the Wolf River Harbor in Memphis on May 29, 1997, fully dressed and singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”.
He recalled that after seeing Jeff walk fully dressed into the river, he stayed on the shore. After moving a radio and a guitar to protect them from the water, he looked back toward the river and realized the musician had vanished. The wake from a passing tugboat had swept him away and dragged him underwater. Jeff’s body was recovered five days later in a different location, caught in tree branches.
A few years before, he had praised Plant’s singing in Interview magazine, saying: “That’s my man! The cool thing about all those Zeppelin songs is that, because of the way Plant sings, if you put them into a different musical setting, they would sound like R&B songs. With Led Zeppelin, everything was out of tune, and Plant sang wrong notes. But he was the one that showed me that there aren’t any wrong notes,” Jeff Buckley said in 1994.