10 Rock Songs With Horrible Backstories
Making beauty of darkness.
Rock and roll was never meant to be the most lighthearted of genres.
Since this was the kind of music that was supposed to be the antithesis of the wholesome music of the 1940s, you can imagine the shock that most people had when seeing people like Little Richard scream into the microphone for the first time.
Still, that doesn't mean that rock and roll wasn't afraid to get pitch black in its presentation.
For as much as these songs might stick in your head time and time again, there's a lot more shady stuff going on in the background. Whether it be from how they got the lyrical inspiration or the way that the parts were recorded, a lot of pain had to happen before songs like these could have been recorded properly. And it gets even creepier when they go on to become the biggest songs that the band ever has.
Yeah, for a handful of these tracks, they aren't just a strange tangent for the group...they're the calling card of their entire career. So now you have legions of fans singing along to songs that are so messed up that reading the lyrics aloud on the street will get you some strange looks.
Then again, it takes the true artists to make something with an ugly story and turn it into something beautiful.
10. To Live Is To Die - Metallica
Of all of the phenomenal metal albums that Metallica released in the '80s, And Justice For All seems to be a bit of a black sheep. Outside of the memes being made about how you can't hear the bass, there seems to be something missing from the traditional thrash sound that the metal gods were known for. And that missing puzzle piece's name was Cliff Burton.
After going on tour to promote their previous album, Cliff was tragically killed in a bus accident on their way to the next show. Still stricken with grief by the time they went on to record the next album, most of the hazing fell on replacement Jason Newsted, which turned a bit ugly when they decided to turn his bass down in the mix. When the smoke cleared though, To Live Is To Die is still one of the most heartbreaking things you will ever hear.
Inspired by their memories of Cliff, this entire instrumental plays out like the band members trying to cope with playing music after the loss of their friend, especially with the mid section where James Hetfield recites a poem that Cliff had written shortly before his death. Even though metal is known to be a mean genre, this is the closest thing you'll get to hearing people deal with the stages of grief in real time.