"Master of Puppets" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on July 2, 1986, as the only single from the band's 1986 studio album of the same name. It was also issued as a promo single in the US by Elektra Records. The song was recorded during October–December 1985 at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the second and title track of the album, preceded by a shorter, high-speed typical thrash metal track, "Battery", a similar sequencing heard on Metallica's second and fourth albums. "Master of Puppets" is also notable for its extensive use of downpicking and long instrumental section, beginning at 3:34. The song, as lead singer James Hetfield explained, "deals pretty much with drugs. How things get switched around, instead of you controlling what you're taking and doing, it's drugs controlling you." The song was bassist Cliff Burton's favorite song on the album, as quoted when the album was released. The song is one of the band's most famous and popular songs, frequently played at concerts.
Live performances
The videos Cliff 'Em All and S&M include live performances of "Master of Puppets" in its entirety. A shortened form appears in Cunning Stunts. Both versions can be seen in the video portions of the box set. "Master of Puppets" is the band's most played song of all time, first played on December 31, 1985, at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for a crowd of 7,000. As of, the song has been performed 1,673 times. During the band's World Magnetic Tour, additional live performances were filmed in Mexico City; Nîmes, France and Sofia, Bulgaria. These performances were released on video in November 2009 and October 2010. From late 1999 through 2000, Metallica often combined the song with "Welcome Home " in concert, calling it "Mastertarium". More recently, Hetfield replaces the line "Fix me" with "pancakes" when performing the song. This is because bassist Cliff Burton once misheard the line as "pancakes", according to Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante.
Track listing
Awards
ranked the song as the third greatest heavy metal song ever. In March 2005, Q magazine placed it at number 22 in its 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks list. Martin Popoff's book The Top 500Heavy Metal Songs of All Time ranked the song at number 2. Popoff composed the book by requesting that metal fans, musicians, and journalists nominate their favorite heavy metal songs. The author derived the final rankings from a database tallying almost 18,000 votes. The song also ranked number 1 on a 100 Greatest Riffs poll conducted by Total Guitar magazine. The readers of Guitar World voted the song as ranking at number 51 among the . Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett's solos for "Fade to Black" and "One" ranked significantly higher on the same list.
