Somehow, back in 2021, I completely missed the release of The Metallica Blacklist, a multi-artist tribute to the elder statesmen’s 1991 album.

What’s weird about this set, though, is how they settled the “who gets to do which song” debate that I assume underpins every such tribute record. This time, the remit was “hey, fuck it, just do whichever song you want.” This led to (a) a huge collection; it has 53 tracks spread across 4 discs (I mean, if you buy it)… but all 53 of those tracks are versions of the twelve songs from The Black Album.

There are six versions of “Enter Sandman,” for example (including one from Ghost) and a full dozen of “Nothing Else Matters” — including contributions from Phoebe Bridgers, Dave Gahan, My Morning Jacket, Darius Rucker, Chris Stapleton, and a weird all-star recording from Miley Cyrus collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Elton John, Chad Smith, and Robert Trujillo. I mean: dang.

The upshot is that this is probably not something you’d sit and listen to at once — I mean, I like this kind of stuff, but even I don’t want to listen to twelve covers of the same song back to back. At the same time, the lack of scarcity brought on by a streaming-first world (again, 53 tracks, so a pre-streaming physical version would’ve doubtless been prohibitively expensive for most folks) means there’s space here for some wildly different, very experimental versions of these songs.

That’s cool.

Anyway. Carry on.