The hated Robert Plant song he wrote as a joke: “It’s supposed to be funny”
The most creative people are never satisfied being in a box all the time. Even if they can make one kind of song really well, it starts to get boring trying to go into the same format and try to make something that’s even better than the track that you already had a hit with. Robert Plant was never content to stay stagnant in Led Zeppelin or in his solo years, but he admitted that he may have bitten off a little more than he could chew on Shaken N’ Stirred with ‘Too Loud’.
At the same time, Plant was always going to have the unenviable task of having to have his solo work compared to Led Zeppelin. Even Jimmy Page had a supergroup with Paul Rodgers with The Firm, but flying soloing for the first time after being dubbed ‘The Golden God’ had more than a few people eyeing up Plant, expecting him to be just as good as his old outfit.
That kind of pressure feels impossible for anyone to overcome, so Plant didn’t bother trying. Throughout his work solo and with Band of Joy, many of his greatest moments came from deliberately moving away from what Zeppelin was known for. There were still traces of blues mixed into everything, but the folksy spin on it was almost as if the version of Zeppelin from their third outing had turned into a full band.
By Shaken N’ Stirred, though, that period of Plant’s career was long gone. He had done that bit, and now the newest flavours of the day were the sounds of new wave bands, taking the building blocks of rock and roll and putting dance textures underneath everything.
While Plant could lay down a groove with Zeppelin, he admitted that his attempt at making that style of new wave wasn’t taking itself too seriously. When talking about ‘Too Loud’, he felt that the piece was supposed to have a bit of a humorous edge behind it, saying, “I did a track on Shaken’ n’ Stirred called ‘Too Loud’, and I got some of Bette Midler’s girls to help me with some choruses and stuff. I basically was seriously affected by David Byrne. It’s very funny, it’s a funny song, it’s supposed to be funny.”
That’s not how the fans took it when they finally heard it on the radio. Compared to the strutting rock and roll badass that had started everything back in the 1970s, this felt like him trying and failing to become a new-wave rockstar, almost like he was shooting for Devo and ended up closer to a middle-aged man trying to fumble his way through the hip new sounds of what kids are listening to these days.
If anything, this kind of mode should have sunk Plant’s career, but that’s not what happened. Although he had to work his way back up, his later collaborations with Jimmy Page for the Page and Plant records felt like the fans getting a whiff of what the older version of Zeppelin could have sounded like had John Bonham not passed away.
It’s not like Plant was afraid of trying new things, either, eventually trying his hand at making bluegrass records with Alisson Krauss on Raising Sand. Fans are more than happy to tell Plant when he’s out of his depth, but it’s almost reassuring that he’s able to make something new and see where it goes.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.