12 Best Hard Rock Singers Of The 1990s
2. James Hetfield - Metallica
When you talk about Metallica, many people single out the band's best years as being their thrash period in the 1980's. At a time when the rock charts were dominated by wannabe metalheads in spandex, these guys were slowly festering from the underground bringing the best metal ever created to the masses. Once the band reached the 90's, their change in musical style ended up giving us one of the greatest hard rock singers ever.
In the early days of the band, James Hetfield never wanted to be a singer. With a vocal delivery that was very rough around the edges, the main motivation behind Hetfield's 80's delivery was about aggression rather than technical sophistication. However, things started to change once The Black Album started to take shape.
Across tracks like "Sad But True" and "Nothing Else Matters," Hetfield turned himself into one of most versatile singers in metal, whose unique timbre could be be both delicate and ravaging. Even on the band's later records like Load and Reload, Hetfield's biting lyrics and sultry voice was what held the weaker songs together. James Hetfield probably didn't envision becoming a metal singer, but over time he turned himself into one of the greatest vocalists the genre had ever heard.