Tuesday, May 25, 1993

Robert Plant Fate of Nations released

Fate of Nations

Robert Plant

Released: May 25, 1993

Peak: 34 US, 6 UK, 12 CN, 37 AU

Sales (in millions): 0.5 US, 0.06 UK

Genre: rock

Tracks:

Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts.

Calling to You [5:48] (5/15/93, 3 AR, 47 CN)
Down to the Sea [4:00]
Come into My Life [6:32]
I Believe [4:32] (10/9/93, 9 AR, 64 UK, 37 CN)
29 Palms [4:51] (5/93, 4 AR, 21 UK, 11 CN, 79 AU)
Memory Song (Hello Hello) [5:22]
If I Were a Carpenter [3:45] (12/25/93, 63 UK, 50 CN)
Colours of a Shade * [4:43]
Promised Land [4:59]
The Greatest Gift [6:51]
Great Spirit [5:27]
Network News [6:40]

* On UK edition.

Total Running Time: 58:53

Rating:

3.399 out of 5.00 (average of 16 ratings)

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

Robert Plant’s sixth album“was a more sophisticated affair than its front cover image – children watching a melting Planet Earth – might suggest.” ^Q On the “eco-conscious Fate of Nations” ^Q “Plant sounded at peace with himself.” ^Q

Plant said he knew in 1991 that he wanted to reach into his past. He was inspired by listening to some of his favorites such as Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, Tim Hardin (Plant covers Hardin’s If I Were a Carpenter on the album), Quicksilver, Traffic, and other “turning-point artists in rock,” ^WK as he called them. He said, “These people were trying to tell the listener something, joining various traditions, with the sense of a quest being insinuated and bandied in their acoustic and electronic themes. I’m also proud of what I’ve attempted to do lyrically trying to tell vivid tales that come from a hearty tradition of prose.”

Examples of Plant dipping into his past including Calling to You, where he is “reprising Led Zeppelin’s old bluster” ^Q and “the plaintive I Believe,” ^Q a song about about the death of his five-year-old son Karac in 1977.

Those songs were album rock hits, as was 29 Palms. That song grew out of the previous tour and his time in a small California town in the Mojave Desert called Twentynine Palms. The town is one of the main entrance points to the Joshua Tree National Park.

The album was Plant’s highest charting in the UK since his debut, 1982’s Pictures at Eleven. However, in the United States the album’s #34 peak was his lowest yet. The album did still reach gold status, maintaining his streak for every one of his studio releases with Led Zeppelin and as a solo act.

This was Plant’s last solo album in nearly a decade. He reunited with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page for a live album (No Quarter, 1994) and a studio project (Walking into Clarksdale, 1998) before releasing his seventh solo album, Dreamland, in 20002.

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