This is a week of a lot of firsts for us. Here's another: our first Metallica post.
We chose a well-known and relatively not-metal song for this first post, for reasons. But it's a song with a story.
Written by James Hetfield (who also gave Lars Ulrich a credit for insisting upon bringing it to the band), it wasn't intended to be for Metallica - and in fact, Hetfield was hesitant to bring it forward, as it's a love song (about his girlfriend at the time). On the recording, Hetfield gave lead guitarist Kirk Hammett a break and took the guitaring duties himself (of course, by the time they hit the tour, Hammett had to learn the song).
The song ended up being released as the 3rd single from Metallica's eponymous fifth album that featured a very black cover. It was a huge hit for the band, nearly making the US Top 10 (unheard of for such a heavy band).
The song was rerecorded by the band in 1999 with an orchestral accompanyment by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. This version ended up being a European Top 10 hit. This version, in my opinion, does a better job at building - but there were 100 more instruments used in this version, so I guess that's a reason why.
As part of a celebration of the 30th anniversary of what was commonly called The Black Album, Metallica recorded this song with Miley Cyrus, who had famously covered it, on Howard Stern's show.
It was incredible.
We like to highlight when bands are still performing their songs - and thanks to YouTube, we have a video from literally this month of the band performing it in Göteborg, Sweden - and not missing a beat.
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