My entire morning so far has been devoted to thinking how I was going to construct this segment. Today’s lyricist #90 is an interesting figure that alot of people respect and an almost equal amount of people do not like. Personally, I like him. His lyrics are different, depressing, and real. His lyrics were the basis of the premier 1980’s Metal Band that shot the hearts of tons of listeners and brought a new type of metal to the states. His band was aptly named Metallica, and he is James Hetfield.
Metallica, and no one can dispute this, was an amazing band in the 1980’s. Their albums were tremendous and their music was pounding rock, raw, and oddly melodic and wonderful. After their 1991 release of Metallica (The Black Album) which featured the iconic “Enter Sandman,” thoughts on the worth of Metallica started to dwindle. Yet, we are not here to discuss Metallica, the band. We are only about the lyric, man, and today’s segment will focus on James Hetfield and why he lyrics are worth #90 recognition
Pro (Good Metallica)
My suitemate came in a few minutes ago and asked, “How is James Hetfield over a guy like Josh Ritter.” To a degree, he has a good point. Ritter’s lyrics are oddly creative and aesthetically beautiful. He is singing about love and religious wars (as much as that sounds intense he mentions such lines as her eyes are like champagne). Hetfield is not. In the two songs that we will explore today he is singing about a mental asylum and the darker side to the evils of war. This makes the song obviously more metal and that is Hetfield’s genre of music. His songs have also spanned numerous succesful albums and his lyrics have been the top source for Metal lyrics for over two decades. If it is not only because of span of work, it is also because Hetfield’s lyrics are also quite raw and true with a large amount of feeling pasted into the underlying message of both songs. Let us look at two songs. First we will start with the always depressing, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” which appeared on Metallica’s 1986 release Master of Puppets, and that is aptly based on the Ken Kesey novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
“Welcome to where time stands still
no one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night
I see our freedom in my sight
No locked doors, No windows barred
No things to make my brain seem scarred”
So, you read them and hopefully are not thoroughly depressed. What do you think? In a complete over-analysis of the segment of lyrics above I particularly enjoy Hetfield’s word use. The moon never seems to changed and is labeled mentally deranged. This, most likely, is a comment on the patients in the mental asylum. They are labeled as an unchanging mass and, even though on the surface people try to treat them, they cannot field any treatment because they are prevented from accessing any freedom. When they do get a little of the real world they tend to get better (as Kesey points out so eloquently with strippers and fishing trips.) Freedom may be in sight in the lyric, but that is surely through death.
Next we have another song from the 1980’s, this one released two years earlier in 1984 with Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. It is entitled, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and is based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the same name.
“Take a look to the sky just before you die
It is the last time you will
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now the will see what will be, blinded eyes to see”
This lyric is beyond depressing, but in reason. It needs to be because it is about dying in war. Blinded eyes, shattered goal, ruthless cry, blackened roar. All descriptions of destruction and hellish states. And, they are quite vivid and miserable descriptions, which is what makes Hetfield great. He is ruthless in his lyric but is also true and feels. Definitely worth #90.
“Welcome Home”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WElvEZj0Ltw
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX-KjkdDozQ&feature=related
It's the beast under your bed, in your closet, in your head.
The Music Court 
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