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Those guys haven’t set off a metal detector since 1987…
There’s a similar issue from earlier this century of artists who turn into copyright maximalists once they’re ridiculously successful, forgetting the mixtape culture and the mp3 culture is what led to concert ticket sales and t-shirt sales.
But yeah they get old and afraid their gazillions are going to run out even when their tours are still selling out from albums released forty years ago, and they have a robust investment portfolio.
Their douchebaggery spawned one of the greatest Flash animations ever
You’re never gonna believe who the poster child of that was in the Napster era
Brings me back to the Flash animation series mocking Metallica for their Napster outcry.
MacroMedia Flash animation was so fucking ahead of its time, and Adobe can go to hell for murdering it.
some asshole drummer
The “Hetfield Effect” describes rockers who are anti-establishment in their youth who often become more conservative as they age and are both wealthy and no longer able to be conscripted. Or, if we were to borrow a term from the boomers, “I got mine, fuck you.”
Also coincides with a complete loss of creativity.
Yet another artist’s political opinion is the very last thing that we need today, in my opinion.
I could give a shit about what Ms. Rachel and Metallica think about any political issue. Fuck them.
So, thanks Metallica, your silence is golden
Life is political. An artist with no political opinions is an artist with no principles.
“Silence is golden” is just something stupid people say when they aren’t able to deal with what others say.
I mean, to play devil’s advocate… that is discriminatory towards stupid people and morons. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being stupid and not understanding the world and the complexities. You shouldn’t be discriminated or scoled for it. Just play your music, have fun, live your life.
But then you come along and demand some grand, well thought out political statement that requires them to read tons of stuff about current and past history. And avoid falling for propaganda that is being peddled. Being ABLE to determine lies and propaganda from previously learned historical facts.
In such cases, silence IS golden. If you’re stupid and your political opinion would be dogshit and you know it - just shut your mouth and we can be bestest friends.
What kind of society are we that we’re counting on uneducated artists to be thought leaders? Where are the professors and academics who actually study history? Take this Norwegian professor who is highly qualified to speak on current important issues and interview other highly qualified people. That’s who we should be listening to. Not stupid Metallica. They dumb.
The correct phrase is “I couldn’t give a shit”.
Seems like someone needs to watch some Ms. Rachel.
Fucking love me some Mrs Rachel. She doesn’t think children should be murdered
This guy gives shits.
Can I get the context for Miss Rachel?
Unlike the wimps of Metallica, she’s proven herself willing to jeopardize her career by speaking truth to power.
Specifically about how she thinks that murdering and starving hundreds of thousands of children is actually a BAD thing even when it’s the West’s favorite fascist apartheid state doing it.
I get that, I just don’t know who she is or what she sings or how she spoke to power. Was it a song? A post? I’m guessing she’s an entertainer for children?
She basically does education videos for toddlers, especially early language training afaik. She regularly makes calls to support children in war- and disaster torn countries. When palastine became one of those, conservatives got pissy.
Ok dope, ty. Good for her!
What’s her career?
Children’s edutainment.
And she’s damn good at it too, being nearly universally ADORED by the tens of millions of parents who’ve ever watched her videos with their kid, as well as the kids themselves.
Google.
Wow, she’s really into AI these days.
Our time isnt worth less than yours. Spend your own time answering basic questions.
I use to feel that way. I guess I still feel that way. Now-a-days I spoon feed information to people online because I know they will not actually look the information up.
Fair. I personally prefer to tell people to atop being lazy.
She’s based af
For anyone requiring too much context https://youtu.be/QwpanShgOp4
Theyve always been dbags posing as rebels
Am I exempt from giving a shit about their views if I don’t pay for their music? And I am only talking about up to and including the black album.
To be fair to Metallica, Metal, along with various “outcast” and “manly” hobbies/interest, have been infested with political tourist. It’s why these hobbies have fanbases that are just insane, but do have money to spend. It’s grim, shit sucks.
There’s also a ton of white supremacists, I don’t think Metallica would particularly lose any fans but I bet some metal groups would actually lose fans supporting Israel lol.
Metallica have been tourists since day zero
It’s an act. Many popular music musicians are actors really. And metal is just a form of pop music. Feel free to disagree
These few Metal artists fit into pop, if it’s popular according to record companies and the music industry then it’s pop, and like Metallica haven’t made actual Metal in decades, some hard rock or dad rock, sure, but Metal? absolutely not. Go to any major radio station that would play Metallica and try and get them to play Phantom Lord or Whiplash if you doubt that.
Most of the Metal out there would NEVER be played on the radio nor would they want to be, neither are they considered “popular” by any of the previous criteria.
I’m on board with that. My initial take is admittedly not good. Reaction to the article and the band.
And by pop I mean popular music. Maybe not at first but they play corporate events now ffs. Selling millions. My humble opinion. Re: grunge, yeah pop for a Seattle minute.my opinion.
I agree with this other than calling metal pop. Like that’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of music genres that I cannot abide. The rest, especially the part about popular musicians often just being paid for actors, is spot on.
I’ve posted this in the past Jeffrey Lewis and The Rain have a fantastic lyric about this in WWPRD:
Bands who break through walls with speakers
Not just try to sell you sneakers
You want bands who wanna sell you things
Or bands who wanna tell you things?
Isn’t pop just a shortening of popular? So pop music is just popular music?
To metalhead apparently yes. To literally anyone else in the music industry no. Pop is specifically commercially designed music. Could you imagine booking a pop cover band and they show up and start playing Metallica? The imagery of that is kind of hilarious to me. Like read the wiki if you really care to try and categorize it more than “it 'spopular so it’s pop.”
Pretty sure this is a word use issue. Metal IS pop music, in that it is closely tied to mainstream commercial endeavors.
The GENRE pop music is basically a nonsense term. Its not one thing, its dozens, and metal is a counter response to many of those things.
Yes, you can lump a whole ton of stuff together and make categorical statements about it, even when it shouldn’t make sense.
Rap is pop? Yep! And nope! Country is pop? Yep! And nope! Metal is pop? Yep! And nope!
So yes, Metallica as people may (have once) been a part of the ethos that spawned metal and its signifiers, they are absolutely pop stars.
I gotta say up front I don’t know how much this really matters. Look, if you can find venue/record store, that isn’t just making a dig at them by calling them pop, I’ll consider changing my definition. But like I’ve never, in the hundreds of record stores I’ve been in, or the multiple different places I’ve listened to music, seen Metallica in the Pop section. It just does not fit description or sound that people associate with pop.
Additionally, I legitimately don’t think Metallica are talented enough to make a pop/poppy song. I think they are a band of one trick ponies and they never strayed super far from that in my past listening, or in my incredibly limited recent listening.
Like just reading through the wiki for pop music and I don’t see how their music fits the bill really. There are just too many differences in the style, makeup, and general sound to make the square peg fit in the round hole in my opinion:
Youre right, but this isnt me reversing course, its me saying: you are using “pop music” with a different definition from the person you are responding too
Pop-music per your definition is a genre or set of genres. Pop-music per the definition presented though is any successfully commercialized music that by association with the label of that commercialized genre perpetuates further commercialization. Metallica, and thus metal that follows them falls into this category.
I’ve always found anti-establishment music on commercial labels interesting. I think a lot of the time the musicians are putting on an act. They’re doing what sells, and sometimes that’s singing anti-establishment songs, even if they don’t feel that message in their hearts.
Then there are bands like Chumbawamba and Rage Against the Machine where I think the artists actually do have anti-establishment views. When they have commercial success it’s interesting. The band is sometimes happy that they’re able to spread their message more widely. But, sometimes they’re conflicted because they’re feeding the very machine against which they rage. Meanwhile, the record company realizes that the band’s success is due to their anti-establishment message. So, somehow they need to milk the commercially successful act to generate as much profit as possible without pissing off the band too much, and without getting the band labelled as a sell-out.
"All you know about me is what I’ve sold you, dumb fuck.
I sold out long before you’d ever even heard my name.
I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit, then you bought one."
Jokes on him I think he’s a douche for the things he’s DONE not just the music he’s made. The music is still pretty shit in my opinion, but his actions are top shelf asshole.
Im not OP but maybe they meant Metallica is pop. Which I hard agree with. Or the other huge, major popular ‘metal’ bands mostly from the 80s and 90s that are now mostly enjoyed by children and high schoolers.
I dunno. I still put those into metal, just sellout bullshit metal. I feel like you have to take the good with the bad. I try not to get all “no true scotsman” with bands just cause I personally despise everything they make and stand for.
Pop is just a completely different genre, with a completely different sound. That’s why personally, I just can’t abide by saying that Metallica, no matter how shit at metal they are, is somehow pop. There’s not a single song I can think of that I would classify as pop music that I’ve heard from them. In fairness though, I don’t think I’ve listened to them in like 25ish years so they might have completely changed and started making dance music or some shit.
For an added little further explanation I hate Pantera cause they’re bunch of weird racists. I still think they make metal music. They’re just shit heads and I’ll never listen to their garbage either.
I mean, one, the Unforgiven, even nothing else matters is a great song but it isn’t very similar to most of what you find in the ‘metal’ genre except that they use electric guitars. If you swapped out the guitars for like a piano or acoustic it definitely sounds like pop. Also it’s not even just Metallica. songs like crazy train or Mr Crowley… These are definitely ‘pop metal’ that’s very much more accessible to fans of other genres than any other kind of metal.
Fair enough. I’ll start moving their records to the pop section when I go to music stores!
Out of curiosity how would you classify Nirvana? To stay in the metal genre, a better example might be System of A Down. Specifically songs like Chop Suey! fit the definition you have as I understand it.
Personally, I think it gets sort of needlessly pedantic to put EVERY band into the pop category because they had a poppy/popular song. I also think people, especially metal heads, like to exclude bands from the genre they like because they don’t like that band in particular. They even have had some rather interesting takes about what is “metal” and go to great lengths to defend that notion. Not to say other music fans don’t do it, just that metal seems to struggle with it more than most.
Yeah there are reasons I shunt ppl that hear Metallica and there is a reason I am not listening to them
Need context.
James said artists shouldn’t make political statements during their shows. Now go take a look at the cover of and justice for all.
That’s silly, not making a statement is still making a statement.
But thank you.
They did more to piss off their fans. Back in the 90s, they went public decrying Napster as theft to Congress. This was when the Internet was just getting warmed up and Napster allowed you to download any mp3 you wanted (local music file stored on your computer). There was some very funny Flash at the time (a form of webpage now defunk) depicting them pretty badly.
he said unlike other artists metallica isnt going to do that, just spread a message of love and metal. unless there was more that wasnt in the clip i saw
So between the St. Anger debacle, jailing their own fans for downloading their music, and this, are Metallica the biggest pussies in the business?
They have very stiff competition but yeah, they’re DEFINITELY up there with the worst of them!
Um ackchyually, Miss Rachel is more Punk than Metal.
I’d go with hardcore, I think.
¿Por que no los dos?
Punk made their anti-fascist / anti-nazi /anti-racism stances quite well known since the movement started. Metal on the other hand, one must carefully investigate each and every band, as half of them are open or closeted fascists and racists.
Half of them is a massive exaggeration. Even if only looking at black metal and ignoring the rest, the number of sketchy bands is still relatively small.
Especially black Metal
Especially from Scandinavian places (or just European).
I don’t know about “half”, but yeah.
James is a fucking coward and metallica is shit.
I never got over having my Napster account blocked because I had one of their shit songs.
I never got over James Hetfield being proud that their songs were used to torture Iraqi prisoners.
Skinny Puppy sent the US defence department a bill.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/07/skinny-puppy-payment-guantanamo
(my bold)
In 2008, responding to the use of Metallica’s music to torture Iraqi prisoners, Hetfield was unoffended and replied, “If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be part of their exposure.”[47] British band Chumbawamba subsequently released a song called “Torturing James Hetfield” in response.[48] In a 2017 interview, Hetfield reaffirmed his previous stance, saying, “I’m honored my country is using something to help us stay safe, if they are. But then again, once the music is out, I don’t have control over that. Just like how someone’s giving it away online. They’re using it to do what they do.”[49]
I’m honored my country is using something to help us stay safe, if they are. But then again, once the music is out, I don’t have control over that.
Wow… Starts boldly claiming he’s pro torture, couches it in a “well maybe it’s not being used tho?” then immediately goes full on “wellp, it’s out of my control” 🤷
What a typical, boring, old right winger claiming he’s centrist.
Chumbawamba…is BASED!? Now I’m glad they get up again and cant be kept down…
Chumbawumba is a group of anarchists and most of their songs portray this fact. I believe it’s the main reason you only ever hear a song about getting shitfaced and not any of their other ones.
chumbawamba is deeply based. margaret killjoy did a two-parter on them years ago. they are more than just tumbthumping. try anarchy or english rebel songs.
Learned about their leanings a few years ago and I’m honestly a bigger fan of their politics than I am their music.
Would you say that this revelation has opened your eyes, that it’s time to wake up?
But not very metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1UZ6d0H8fA
What a fucking asshole.
I mean, that was back when they were still making good music afair…
Their anti piracy crusade still made them shit overall, of course, especially Ulrich.
I’m not afraid to say that it’s my honest opinion that Metallica hasn’t had a good album (musically) since “…and Justice For All.”
Load/Reload struggled to give us anything other than radio shill & everything after that was empty & hollow.
Pan-fucking-Tera & Slayer spanked them so hard they had to use cum & blood (allegedly) for anyone to give a shit, and that was just album covers.
Don’t even get me started about the album without any solos. It’s wasn’t necessary to include solos, but they made it obvious they chose not to.
Possibly unpopular option, but any guitar solo is just ass.
I’m not afraid to say that it’s my honest opinion that Metallica hasn’t had a good album (musically) since “…and Justice For All.”
Agreed. That’s their best (yes, better than the black album) and last good album IMO.
I guess I remembered the Napster affair as being earlier or Load being later than it actually was 🤷🏻
Dre too, fuck that dude as well.
Really from the band that crashed out over Napster?
FIRE BAD!
James spent blood, sweat and beers!!
BEERS GOOD!
Blood, sweat, and motherfucking beer!
between this and monkey for president, camp chaos was everything
They have no standards except double ones
If there were no double standards there wouldn’t be any standards at all
