During a recent appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” Lars Ulrich was asked to name a song that, in his opinion, best represents what METALLICA does, both musically and lyrically.
“‘[Master Of] Puppets’ is definitely a very, very, very close to the top choice, because, I guess, it checks a lot of boxes,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a longer song, it’s kind of a journey, and it’s got the light and the dark, the heavy and the more melodic. So it’s got the many different moods. Obviously, it’s also got an incredible set of lyrics. The lyrics can be whatever you want. And I’ve had conversations with tons of people about different meanings and so on, but when [James] Hetfield [METALLICA frontman] writes lyrics that can be interpreted in any way that the listener wants, that’s when I think they are at the best. And so it’s got those lyrics. And it checks a lot of those boxes.
“Another song that checks a lot of those boxes is ‘One’. But then there’s some deeper cuts. I think a song like ‘Bleeding Me’ has a lot of those boxes checked also,” Lars continued. “And some of the stuff from the last couple of records. To me, it’s a testament to the strength of the last two records, Death Magnetic and Hardwired[… To Self-Destruct].
“A lot of the earlier records, we’d make them, and then we’d kind of sit there six months later or a year later and go, ‘I don’t know about that mix,’ or, ‘I don’t know what we were thinking on that outro,’ or, ‘I don’t know what was going on in that guitar part,’ or that crazy drum fill or whatever. But both Death Magnetic and Hardwired, to me, the shelf life of both of those records in terms of me sitting there and questioning the decisions that were made, they both come in still very, very well on my critique list, or however you phrase it.
“I think that a song like ‘Moth Into Flame’ or ‘Halo On Fire,’ and even going back to Death Magnetic… When I was jamming along downstairs a couple two, three days ago, I was playing ‘Cyanide’ on drums, I was playing ‘Broken, Beat & Scarred’ and I was playing ‘All Nightmare Long’, and a couple of those tracks still sound as fresh and relevant as they did 12 years ago.
He added: “But forced [laughs] to make a choice, I guess I would probably nominate ‘Master Of Puppets’ or ‘One’ as the ones that cover most of the bases and most of what we in METALLICA are proudest of in terms of what we do.”
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