10 Amazing Songs That Artists Hate
3. Escape - Metallica
As the thrash scene started to get under way, it felt like Metallica was truly unstoppable. With their first record Kill Em All providing the mission statement for this new aggressive form of heavy metal, Ride the Lightning doubled down with the first epics of the band's career like on Creeping Death and Fade to Black. While James Hetfield has gone on record saying this is his favorite album, he doesn't feel as strongly about Escape.
When the guys were cutting the demos for what would become Ride the Lightning, they finished the album only to realize they were missing a song. As the label started to recommend more radio-friendly material, the last minute jam session yielded Escape, which feels much more in line with something by Thin Lizzy than straight-ahead thrash metal. Despite having a pretty kickass breakdown in the bridge, Escape has been the pariah of Metallica's catalog ever since it was released.
Up until the 2010's, Metallica never played the song live until it was time to play Ride the Lightning in full. Even then Hetfield hadn't changed his tune on it, going so far as to mock the song after asking the crowd "Do you love it?." While Metallica have certainly done far worse than Escape over the years, it's still heralded as a track that isn't supposed to exist.