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Metallica co-founder James Hetfield was brought to tears after receiving high praise from music titan Sir Elton John.
The band is celebrating the 30th anniversary of their self-titled fifth studio album known as "The Black Album." To celebrate, the band put together Metallica Blacklist, a tribute album that features 53 bands covering their original work.
Among those on the tribute are Elton John and Miley Cyrus, who teamed up to create a cover of “Nothing Else Matters.” Miley performed with the band on The Howard Stern Show and received some impressive accolades from Sir Elton John himself, who made a surprise appearance via Zoom.
“This is one of the best songs ever written to me,” Sir John said. “I mean, it’s a song that never gets old. I’m playing on this track, I just couldn’t wait, because the chord structure, the melodies, the time changes. It’s got drama written all over it and I just thought it was a great idea to start with piano,” the music legend continued, bringing the band’s lead guitarist and main songwriter to tears.
“I have to say, it was no-brainer playing on this song. Metallica are probably the creme-de-le-creme of those kinds of bands, you can’t really define them, not a heavy metal band, they are a musical band. Their songs are not just heavy metal, they are beautiful songs and this is such a melodic song, it’s f––ing great, actually,” Elton John added.
The band was honored to hear the praise, drummer Lars Ulrich saying that if you would have told the group 40 years that Elton John would be playing one of their songs, “that would be the mindf**k of all the mindf**ks.”
“So it’s just crazy cool and to sit here and be able to hear what you said… we’ve been doing this for 40 years together,” Ulrich added. “This is just incredible to hear, so thank you.”
Metallica’s Blacklist album was released in June and will be arriving on vinyl and CD beginning October 1. According to the band’s website, all profits from the album “will be donated to charities of each contributing artists’ choice along with Metallica’s own foundation, All Within My Hands.”