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Metallica can’t get enough of their “Stranger Things” shout-out.
On Friday, the heavy metal band took to TikTok to play a virtual duet of their song “Master of Puppets,” which was featured in the Season 4 finale of the Netflix series. Decked out in matching Hellfire Club t-shirts, frontman James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo jammed out to the song as the climactic scene played on the opposite screen.
“Eddie, this is for you!” the band captioned the post, referring to HellFire club leader Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn).
During the pivotal scene, which hit the streaming service July 1, Munson unleashes guitar-fueled fury in an attempt to distract the demonic bats as part of the gang’s plan to kill Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).
What riffs does he shred? Those in “Master of Puppets,” the title track of Metallica’s 1986 heavy metal masterpiece. Metallica fans quickly identified the song, but many who might not have been familiar with it went to the streaming services as it was identified on social media.
“Master of Puppets” went on to peak at No. 1 on the iTunes Top Rock chart and No. 2 on iTunes’ Top 100 chart. And on Apple Music, streams of “Master of Puppets” rose 740% worldwide July 1-5, the service said.
On Spotify, where “Master of Puppets” is Metallica’s third most-streamed song, daily global streams were up 779% globally on July 5, compared to the previous week, the music streaming service said.
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Metallica, who’s currently on tour in Europe, took time to thank the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, for the song’s inclusion in an Instagram post July 5.
“The way The Duffer Brothers have incorporated music into ‘Stranger Things’ has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include ‘Master of Puppets’ in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it,” the post read.
“We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did we were totally blown away… it’s so extremely well done, so much so, that some folks were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Joseph Quinn’s hands in the trailer!! How crazy cool is that?”
Quinn plays guitar and told Entertainment Weekly that he learned the song so his character would, well, be in character.
“We had a backing track and I was playing along with it,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t wanna mess with what they’ve already got, but it was very useful to be able to play along character-wise. It’s a pretty adolescent fantasy to be a rockstar, isn’t it? I felt like one for a night.”
The show’s music supervisor Nora Felder told Variety the show’s creators had the song in mind long before filming the scene. “It was another one of those ‘it has to be this song,’ moments,” she said.
“This part of the story was anticipated to be a pivotal and especially hair-raising scene in which Eddie heroically stood tall for the fight of his life,” she said. “I believe the Duffer Brothers felt that playing ‘Master of Puppets’ throughout the extended scene was the clear choice. No other song was discussed further, and we jumped in to clear it straight away.”
“Master of Puppets” made sense because the song, she said, “in some ways, aligns with Eddie’s seemingly arrogant and edgy in-your-face public persona.”
Metallica isn’t the only artist to get a dose of “Stranger Things” magic.
First, the Netflix series gave Kate Bush a boost with the inclusion of her 1985 song “Running Up that Hill (Deal With God)” as an integral part of the fourth season of the Netflix series.
The song hit No. 1 on the UK Official Singles Chart, making Bush, 63, the record-holder for widest gap between No. 1 singles – she previously hit No. 1 in 1978 with “Wuthering Heights.”
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Contributing: Naledi Ushe, Edward Segarra
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
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