10 Rock Music Songs That Were Almost Never Released
5. Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
It must be difficult as a professional musician to write a song solely for yourself, as there is surely immense pressure to bring everything up to release standards.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield did just this in 1990, when he wrote himself a simple ballad to cope with feeling homesick whilst on tour. This was just a man getting out his feelings through song, nothing more... until Lars Ulrich heard it.
Damn you, Lars! Little eavesdropper.
At Ulrich's insistence, Nothing Else Matters was considered for the band's upcoming self-titled record, also known as the Black Album. It made the cut and found its way into the band's regular rotation, having been played over 1,000 times live.
The finished product of Nothing Else Matters is so aggressively radio-friendly that it would have been criminal not to release it as a single; a decision that helped change the perception of Metallica from "those blokes who make a lot of noise" to "those blokes who make a lot of noise, but also write love songs sometimes."
Some would say this was a bad shift, but Hetfield's bank account would disagree.