While off stage, Led Zeppelin may have had a reputation for engaging in debauched antics, and in their songs, they sang lyrics with more than a sexually promiscuous undertone, they were still more than capable of showing off their sensitive side with heartfelt love songs and gentle folk-rock inspired instrumentals. Hard rock doesn’t have to be hard all the time, and the British hard rock leviathans were more than adept when it came to proving that.
While all four members were responsible for sharing songwriting duties to an extent, the majority of the work was taken on by frontman Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page. However, it’s not the usual case of the vocalist writing all of the words and leaving the musical aspects to the lead guitar player, the duo truly split their roles down the middle and assisted one another with both the musical and lyrical elements of songwriting, which is part of the reason why they became such a formidable partnership.
However, on Led Zeppelin II, there’s one song that Plant wrote all of the lyrics for by himself, and when you realise the reason for him having done so, it ends up becoming one of the sweetest and most wholesome tracks in their entire catalogue. Page wanted nothing to do with the lyrics of ‘Thank You’ and left Plant entirely in charge of coming up with the tender lyrical content.
Despite following ‘The Lemon Song’ in the tracklist, a song that is utter filth from start to finish and contains more innuendos than a Kenneth Williams skit, ‘Thank You’ is instead a song of genuine love rather than lust. It was dedicated to Plant’s then-wife, Maureen Wilson, hence Page’s decision to back down from his duties of assisting Plant with finding the right words.
In fact, Page forced Plant to write it all alone, and it’s perhaps for the best that this track came solely from Plant’s heart when he was choosing to dedicate it to such a special individual in his life. Given the personal nature of the track, which opens with the lines: “If the sun refused to shine / I would still be loving you / When mountains crumble to the sea / There will still be you and me”, Page telling Wilson about his devotion to her would have felt inappropriate, not that that was ever an issue for the band when it came to penning the words for other tracks.
Not only is Plant reeling off saccharine prose about his wife, but he’s also saying that despite their past relationships going sour, illustrated in the line “Little drops of rain whisper of the pain / Tears of loves lost in the days gone by”, he and Wilson will remain together forever because his love for her is so strong. Forever, in Plant’s case, is 15 years, with the couple divorcing in 1983 after they’d successfully managed to outlive the lifespan of the band.
With its acoustic instrumentation, soft organs, and cheesy yet heartfelt lyrics, ‘Thank You’ is one of Led Zeppelin’s best examples of the band showing their soft side and demonstrating something a little different from their usual fare. It is perhaps one of their sweetest songs, and there are no allusions to any sex acts whatsoever, just pure love.
