Robert Plant — Record Store Day
Record Store Day on April 18 will spotlight Robert Plant as the 2026 Record Store Legend, and he’s tying the honor to a new four‑track EP, Saving Grace: All That Glitters, released with Saving Grace and singer Suzi Dian. (billboard.com) The event runs across thousands of indie shops worldwide and the overall release slate also includes special items from artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen — so vinyl collectors planning trips should map participating stores now. (uncut.co.uk) (faroutmagazine.co.uk)
Robert Plant is getting a new kind of spotlight on Saturday, April 18: not a stadium, but thousands of independent record shops marking Record Store Day 2026, where he has been named this year’s Record Store Legend. (recordstoreday.co.uk) He is tying the award to a new vinyl release called *Saving Grace: All That Glitters… with Suzi Dian*, a four-track extended play record made with his band Saving Grace and singer Suzi Dian for the same day. (nonesuch.com) The record is not a Led Zeppelin throwback package. It is built from four recently recorded songs, including the traditional tunes “The Blackest Crow” and “Two Coats,” plus covers of Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl” and Bert Jansch’s “Poison.” (recordstoreday.co.uk) That tells you where Plant has been musically in his seventies: closer to folk, Americana, and old ballads than hard-rock bombast, with Saving Grace acting more like a small, nimble roots band than a legacy act. (nonesuch.com) Record Store Day itself was built for exactly this kind of release. The event began after a 2007 meeting of independent record store owners and employees, and the first one was held on April 19, 2008. (recordstoreday.com, recordstoreday.com) In the United States alone, the organizers say the culture around the day centers on nearly 1,400 independently owned stores, and the event now stretches to thousands of participating shops internationally. (recordstoreday.com) The catch for buyers is that Record Store Day is store-by-store, not warehouse-by-warehouse. The official store finder says a participating shop may not carry every title or every promotion, so collectors have to check with specific stores instead of assuming any listing means guaranteed stock. (recordstoreday.com) That matters more this year because the release slate is crowded with big names competing for the same early-morning line. Official guides and music press roundups say the 2026 list includes special releases tied to Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon, Tom Petty, and more. (uncut.co.uk, uncut.co.uk) Plant’s own release is being framed as an exclusive vinyl item for April 18, and some retailer listings say copies are limited and sold first come, first served in stores before any leftover stock goes online later. (recordstoreday.com, piccadillyrecords.com) So the story is not just that Robert Plant is being honored. It is that one of rock’s most famous voices is being used as the face of a day built to get people back into neighborhood record shops, where the prize is a brand-new four-song record you usually cannot just click and stream into your cart. (recordstoreday.co.uk, recordstoreday.com)
