Most High - Jimmy Page & Robert Plant.

JUL 01 1998 · 12:00

Most High - Jimmy Page & Robert Plant. (1998) Director: Floria Sigismondi Era: Late Alternative & Post-Grunge Era (1998) - Peak period of dark, industrial-influenced rock music video production; major legacy artists reconnecting with hard rock roots amid MTV's TRL-era dominance High curatorial value as a rare convergence of three distinct canons: the Led Zeppelin/classic rock heritage legacy, the avant-garde music video art tradition embodied by Sigismondi (whose work is held in MoMA's permanent collection), and the peak of the late-1990s dark-rock visual aesthetic. The video is a documented Grammy-winning production tied to the duo's only studio album, making it an irreplaceable artifact for both music history and the study of the music video as an art form. Its dark surrealist production quality and short-form runtime (4:24) make it an ideal object for archival analysis. Context: Released in March 1998, 'Most High' arrived at a precise cultural inflection point: two foundational Led Zeppelin members presenting entirely new studio material for the first time since the band's dissolution, channeling the dark spiritual ambiguity of late-1990s rock into a music video aesthetic that mirrored the era's industrial-gothic visual language. The video's prison-and-monster iconography, realized through Sigismondi's signature grotesque surrealism, engaged directly with the song's layered Christian and occult imagery, subversive given Page's documented interest in Aleister Crowley's Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The pairing of legacy classic rock figures with one of the most avant-garde music video directors of the decade represents a deliberate cross-generational cultural statement, reinforcing the duo's creative seriousness in an era dominated by nu-metal and pop-rock. Director notes: Confirmed 1998 production for Atlantic Records, released as the lead single from Walking Into Clarksdale. IMDB, IMVDb, and Wikipedia all confirm Sigismondi as director. The video depicts Page and Plant as prisoners in a numbered cell block surrounded by mutant figures engaged in dark ritual practices, visually referencing the song's religious and occult lyrical themes. The production is consistent with Sigismondi's mid-to-late 1990s period aesthetic: heavy use of practical creature fabrication, claustrophobic constructed sets, and rapid intercutting. The video's release coincided with the single reaching #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and the song later winning the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.