(Credits: Far Out / Keneth Cruz)
Thu 4 September 2025 23:00, UK
When James Hetfield listed his favourite songs of all time, most of his choices were entirely unsurprising.
Of course, one of the biggest hard rock pioneers is going to have Black Sabbath on his most cherished. Gasp! Nirvana made it on there, too. As did Thin Lizzy, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Led Zeppelin.
Most of these, for Hetfield, came at a time when music was in dire need of a long-overdue kick up the arse. At a time when hair metal was becoming too much, or too “overproduced”, as Hetfield observed, Nirvana came along and changed course. Their “thrashy garage sound” with huge, melodic hooks was exactly what was needed to replace oversaturation with something completely different, though no less exciting.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be as revolutionary as that, or it is revolutionary because of the simple fact that it’s so effortless. Rather than hinging on some kind of cultural pivot, some of Hetfield’s favourites are also ones who came, saw, and conquered, leaving a cloud of smoke in their wake and countless aspiring musicians scrambling to keep up.
As a guitarist, his heroes were obvious. Ones spawned from hard rock and punk, who had something to say and used the instrument to wreak havoc. “My rhythm gods are Tony Iommi, Rudolf Schenker and Malcolm Young,” he told Music Radar, noting how they kept it “steady”. With The Misfits and the Ramones, it was all about “downpicking” – and them being so earth-shatteringly good you could barely utter anything that wasn’t, “Wow!”
Even still, the one band he’s always felt drifted even further, into the ether where they will never be reached by any other soul, living or dead, is The Beach Boys. Hetfield isn’t alone in this claim, as there have been so many other musicians who have called Brian Wilson every glowing endorsement you could ever think of. Graham Nash once called him a genius. Paul McCartney said ‘God Only Knows’ was one of the greatest songs ever written.
And Hetfield views their talent as something genuinely divine. “I got on a Beach Boys kick again about six months ago,” he told Rolling Stone in 2004. “I grew up in Southern California; to me, their songs speaks to a higher power.”
When Wilson passed, Hetfield also called him “one of the most amazing songwriters on the face of the planet”. For him, his excellence went just beyond the scene in America, reaching broader, more accessible themes that endeared people like Hetfield because of all they’d been through in the business. ‘God Only Knows’ especially was so deceitfully simple, a spiritual yearn that made a sense of belonging feel attainable, if only for just under three minutes.
As McCartney explained, “‘God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian.”
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