Record Store Day picks and Plant honor

Record Store Day is still a week away, and two different rock stories are already using it like a launchpad: Robert Plant is getting a career honor tied to record shops, while Weezer is using the day to roll out old material and tease new material at the same time. (recordstoreday.com 1) (recordstoreday.com 2) Record Store Day 2026 falls on Saturday, April 18, and the event now runs through roughly 1,400 independently owned stores in the United States plus thousands more internationally. It started in 2008 as a store-owner idea and turned into a yearly hunt for limited vinyl, in-store shows, and one-day-only releases. (recordstoreday.com 1) (recordstoreday.com 2) This year’s ambassador is Bruno Mars, but one of the week’s biggest artist announcements is Robert Plant being named a Record Store Legend by Record Store Day in the United States and the United Kingdom. Record Store Day says Plant marked the honor with a visit to Spillers Records in Cardiff, which is widely billed as the world’s oldest record store. (aol.com) (recordstoreday.com) (yahoo.com) The award is a store-culture prize, not a chart prize. Goldmine reports Elton John was the first Record Store Legend in 2017 and Johnny Marr received the honor in 2025, which puts Plant into a very short line of artists being used as symbols of the physical-record era. (goldminemag.com) Plant is also showing up with product, which is how Record Store Day usually works: the tribute and the exclusive release reinforce each other. His Record Store Day title is a four-track 12-inch extended play record called Saving Grace: All That Glitters… with Suzi Dian, released through Nonesuch. (recordstoreday.com 1) (recordstoreday.com 2) The track list is built from four songs rather than one single: “Blackest Crow,” “Poison,” “Orphan Girl,” and “She Cried.” Record Store Day describes it as a continuation of Plant’s Saving Grace project with Suzi Dian and their band, which makes the release feel less like a museum piece and more like a live branch of his current work. (recordstoreday.com) Weezer is taking the opposite route. Instead of being honored for record-store loyalty, the band is using the vinyl calendar to split its story in two parts: a brand-new song online now and an older, previously buried recording on shelves April 18. (wrif.com) (recordstoreday.com) The new song is “Shine Again,” and Wrif reports it is being billed as the first single from Weezer’s upcoming 16th studio album. The same report says the track was produced by Kenny Beats, a producer better known for rap and pop records than for the crunchy guitar sound people usually associate with Weezer. (wrif.com) Then comes the Record Store Day piece: a release called 1192, limited to 3,000 copies and labeled “Record Store Day First.” Record Store Day says founding bassist Matt Sharp found a multitrack analog reel containing Weezer’s earliest studio sessions, turning the release into a before-the-fame snapshot rather than just another colored-vinyl reissue. (recordstoreday.com) (recordstoreday.com) That is why these two announcements fit together even though Robert Plant and Weezer are doing different things. Plant is being used to celebrate the record-store tradition itself, and Weezer is using that same tradition to sell a fan collectible from the band’s origin story while pointing listeners toward album number 16. (recordstoreday.com) (recordstoreday.com) (wrif.com)