(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Tue 2 December 2025 23:00, UK
During the mid-to-late 1990s, many Metallica fans thought the band was becoming major sellouts.
Starting with their ill-fated record Load, many grew concerned that the band had completely disregarded their thrash metal roots for something far more accessible and in keeping with the cultural zeitgeist. While there was nothing inherently wrong with doing so, people took issue with the way the material sounded and felt that their new approach wasn’t all that much to do with progression and innovation, as the band had aimed for during sessions.
However, the members defended their choice, with Lars Ulrich later saying that it was a project born out of their shared desire to keep chasing greatness. “This album and what we’re doing with it, that, to me, is what Metallica are all about: exploring different things,” he said. “The minute you stop exploring, then just sit down and fucking die.”
People responded similarly to the follow-up, Reload. Their departure from their roots and the overall sound of the record made people think that they had well and truly lost any semblance of artistic direction, but, once again, the members described it as something more akin to pursuing a greater sense of creative expression than following the wrong path.
Ulrich also reflected on how things could have been different had the fans given the music a chance and not been immediately turned off by their image, which had them facing questions from fans, including the kicker, “What happened to Metallica, the rebel, longhair, greasy-biker, fuck-you band?”
So, who is the female singer on ‘The Memory Remains’?
What had actually happened, according to Ulrich, was that they were trying something that they genuinely wanted to do, and in turn ended up becoming a “punching bag” because people didn’t like it.
Maybe if people had given it a chance, as Ulrich had wished for, they’d have seen that much of the material did, in fact, build on their previous work, exploring new threads of storytelling that reflected many of the same features of the industry that they were experiencing at the time.
‘The Memory Remains’, for instance, tackles the story of a woman who loses her mind when she eventually becomes a nobody, in a similar way to the plot of Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard. To enrich this theme, they enlisted help from the one voice who could push such an emotional narrative, Marianne Faithfull. In fact, James Hetfield said as much himself once, saying that it was her “weathered” tone that made her a no-brainer for the vocals.
Getting Faithfull on board wasn’t a difficult task, as Faithfull previously recalled to Billboard, saying that she was in Ireland, “quietly living my beautiful life” when the phone rang, and it was Ulrich, asking if she wanted to collaborate. She, of course, said yes, delivering what Hetfield later described as “the whole eeriness of the Sunset Boulevard-feel of the song”.
The lyrics also capture this descent into obscurity and the inevitability of it, no matter how much it ushers the main character into insanity: “Heavy rings hold cigarettes / Up to lips that time forgets / While the Hollywood sun sets behind your back / And can’t the band play on? / Just listen, they play my song / Ash to ash / Dust to dust / Fade to black.”
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