Blacklisted!
Guitar World|November 2021
On the Metallica Blacklist, 53 acts try their hand at reinterpreting one of the Black album’s 12 tracks in their own voice. Here, four artists — St. Vincent, Ghost’s Tobias Forge, Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr and Rodrigo y Gabriela’s Rodrigo Sánchez — discuss how they did it, and what Metallica means to each of them.
By Richard Bienstock
Blacklisted!

ST. VINCENT, SAD BUT TRUE

Why did you choose to cover “Sad But True”?

ST. VINCENT: I think every person has an internal BPM, their own kind of natural tempo. So I thought about doing a faster tune, but then I thought, You know what? I think my natural BPM is this, like, swamp-stomp “Sad But True” BPM. And as far as adding the programmed drums and the instrumentation, I just sort of asked myself, “Okay… how would Skinny Puppy cover Metallica?”

You play several guitar solos in your version. The first one is more of a blues-based lead, which isn’t the type of thing we typically hear from you. Was it fun?

It totally was. With that first solo I was like, “Okay, I need to do right by Kirk and pay homage to his choices.” And so I learned his solo and then did my own take on it. Whereas the second solo, I just said, “Well, what would I do? What’s my natural instinct on this?” And that solo, it’s all me.

How did you approach the song from a vocal perspective?

It’s interesting inhabiting the lyrics of the song, because they’re, like, full-throttle, hands-around-your-neck lyrics. And so I had to find my way into that. Because I don’t have a low Doberman growl like James Hetfield does. I had to think about it: How can I portray menace in this that isn’t coming from a deep baritone place?

How did you get turned on to Metallica?

This story is from the November 2021 edition of Guitar World.

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This story is from the November 2021 edition of Guitar World.

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