Robert Plant honored

Robert Plant’s latest honor is not a hall-of-fame plaque in a museum. It is a Record Store Day award tied to the places where people still flip through bins and buy vinyl by hand, and Record Store Day named him its 2026 Record Store Legend on April 8. (billboard.com) The award is attached to Record Store Day 2026, which takes place on Saturday, April 18, and the event is built around independent record shops and limited releases made for those stores. Plant’s name is on both sides of that setup this year: as the honoree and as an artist with an exclusive release. (recordstoreday.com) Record Store Day did not frame this as a nostalgia stunt. Its statement said the award recognizes Plant’s global impact on music and his continuing support for new artists, record shops, and the wider record-store community. (recordstoreday.co.uk) Plant marked the announcement with a visit to Spillers Records in Cardiff, which Billboard described as the world’s oldest record store. The trip was part ceremony, part message: this was a rock star showing up in an actual shop, not just licensing his name to a campaign. (billboard.com) The new music tied to the moment is a 12-inch vinyl extended play record called *Saving Grace: All That Glitters… with Suzi Dian*. Nonesuch said on February 4 that the record will arrive on Record Store Day, April 18, and that it follows Plant’s recent *Saving Grace* album. (nonesuch.com) That extended play record has four studio tracks, and Record Store Day lists it as an exclusive release limited to 3,500 copies. The official release page names the songs as “Blackest Crow,” “Poison,” “Orphan Girl,” and “She Cried.” (recordstoreday.com) The connection between the honor and the music is direct. Record Store Day is using Plant’s long record-shop identity to spotlight a release that only works in the record-store world, because a limited vinyl pressing depends on fans going into stores on a specific day. (recordstoreday.com) Suzi Dian is not a guest tucked into the fine print here. Nonesuch and Record Store Day both present the project as Robert Plant and Saving Grace with Suzi Dian, which puts her and the band at the center of the current chapter rather than treating this as a solo legacy release. (nonesuch.com) The award also sits inside a small but growing Record Store Day tradition. ABC Audio reporting carried by radio outlets notes that Elton John was the first Record Store Legend in 2017 and Johnny Marr received the honor in 2025, which places Plant in a line of artists closely linked to record-buying culture, not just chart history. (wglx.com) So the story is not only that Robert Plant got another trophy in 2026. It is that a singer best known from the album era is being celebrated by an event built to keep physical record stores alive, while releasing a four-track vinyl record that sends fans back through those same doors on April 18. (recordstoreday.co.uk)