I was listening to commercial radio earlier today – a rather unusual occurrence, I assure you – and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica came piping through my tinny, muffled but otherwise adequate car audio system. It brought back memories of sitting in my college dorm room and trying to learn how to fingerpick the opening on an old Ovation guitar that I borrowed from my roommate. Good times.
I don’t remember the last time I heard the song, but I was impressed by how well it’s held up over the years. This song was always my favorite from Metallica’s self-titled “black” album, which is the only album of theirs I ever listened to much. From what I understand, many non-fans consider this their favorite song.
Musically, it’s solid. I mean, it’s a rock ballad, so it suffers from inherent limitations, but within the medium it’s superlative. The opening is outstanding, and it crescendoes and recedes in all the right places. The ending is perhaps a bit protracted, but one can always cut it short if one desires.
Having always been much more interested in words than music (that’s not a statement about a deficiency of love for music but rather a statement about the extent of my love for words), however, I have a renewed appreciation for the song’s lyrics. One of the things that struck me in this unexpected and singular opportunity for reappraisal was the inherent positiveness of the song. I won’t go through a line-by-line deconstruction or anything like that, but in a nutshell it’s a about being true to yourself and finding connection – and nothing else mattering.
Of course, the cynic in me remembers how Metallica went on to show exactly how much other things mattered to them by becoming shills for the music industry and whining about how people were downloading their music illegally and not paying them. But I am intelligent enough to disambiguate the art from the actions of the artist, and I choose not to let their petty and avaricious hypocrisy ruin the song for me. I’m going to go find a torrent and snag it.
I’m also gonna have to google the tab so I can learn how to fingerpick it again. And then play it for the ladies.