St. Vincent and Sam Fender have both released their own unique covers of the classic 1991 track “Sad But True” from the metal giants Metallica.
This comes off the back of the reveal that Metallica plan to release a massive 30th anniversary celebration of their seminal “The Black Album” with a big, remastered box set, as well as a special tribute album titled “The Metallica Blacklist” which will contain 53 tracks from huge stars, all sharing their love of songs from “The Black Album”.
Metallica wrote on their website about the tribute album “it is a fitting and limitless homage, one that features bands who’ve shared stages with Metallica alongside artists who are younger than the original album. It’s a truly staggering, at times mystifying assemblage of musicians, dozens of whom have little to nothing in common other than the shared passion for the music”
The first 2 tracks came out last week with a Miley Cyrus’ version of “Nothing Else Matters” featuring WATT, Elton John, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert Trujillo & Chad Smith and Latin music superstar Juanes’ interpretation of “Enter Sandman”. Now Fender and St Vincent have released their tracks which you can listen to below.
St Vincent’s version leans more towards her futuristic and outlandish style of performance whilst also keeping some of the main elements of the song such as the iconic guitar riff and the solo. Whereas Fender put much more of a twist on the track and chose to go for a more stripped back mainly piano-led piece. His take has a somewhat haunting quality that exquisitely showcases his soaring vocals.
The amount of artists attracted to this project really shows the significance of “The Black Album”, though this hardly seems surprising given that it’s one of the most commercially successful albums of all time. When it was originally released it propelled Metallica into superstardom, and it still has an impact and relevance to this day. The record also still remains the best-selling album of the past three decades, and one of only two other albums that have spent more than 550 weeks on the Billboard 200. Although St. Vincent’s cover won’t just feature on this special album as it will also appear as the B-side to a Record Store Day 7″. Whilst on the A-side there will be a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Piggy.”
All the profits made on every track from the “The Metallica Blacklist” (pictured above) will go towards Metallica’s charitable foundation, All Within My Hands, along with a charity of each artist’s choice. Sam Fender’s rendition will go towards the Teenage Cancer Trust whilst St. Vincent’s version will support North Texas Food Bank.
