Songoftheday 2/1/21 - Heavy rings on fingers wave another star denies the grave, see the nowhere crowd cry the nowhere tears of honor...
"The Memory Remains" - Metallica
from the album Reload (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4
Today's song of the day comes from the speed metal band Metallica, who had landed the highest-charting pop single of their career in the summer of 1996 with "Until It Sleeps". When lead singer James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bass player Jason Newsted recorded the album that song was on, Load, they had so much material that a year later they released a second disc of songs called Reload. The lead single from this collection was "The Memory Remains", which featured an uncredited vocal from 60's singer/actress Marianne Faithfull. Written by Hetfield and Ulrich, who produced the track with Bob Rock, the song told a tale of an actress past her prime, and Marianne fits that bill's requirements quite cleanly. The music video is a big-budget theme park ride that has the band seemingly performing on a revolving swing as Marianne shows up to guide things along...
"The Memory Remains" returned Metallica to the pop top-40 in December of 1997. The song spent a week at #3 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Finland (for 3 weeks) and Iceland, and reached the top ten in Spain (#3), Norway (#3), Sweden (#4), Hungary (#4), and Australia (#6). It also made the top-40 in Ireland (#13), Denmark (#13), the Netherlands (#15), Germany (#20), Austria (#20), New Zealand (#23), Belgium (#28F), and Switzerland (#30). The Reload album, released in November of that year, came in at #1, going on to sell over three million copies. It was their third consecutive chart-topping studio album.
The band's follow-up to "The Memory Remains" was a sequel to a track from their 1991 classic album, "The Unforgiven II". The single reached #59 on the pop chart, but it was the most successful track from the album at rock radio, spending three weeks at #2 on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the song topped the Finnish charts again, and made the top ten in Norway, Sweden, and Australia, while peaking at #15 in the UK. Then came "Fuel", which landed in the top ten in Australia (#2), Hungary, and Finland, while stopping at #31 in the UK. At the 1999 Grammy Awards, "Fuel" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page's mini-Led Zeppelin reunion on "Most High". Lastly, the track "Better Than You" got to #7 on the Mainstream Rock airplay chart, and won the group their fourth Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.
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Next up, from their S&M live album in 1999 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra...
The band brought in Marianne Faithfull for this show in 2011 in San Fran...
And lastly, on tour in 2019...
Up tomorrow: Mogul is all for the money.
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