On Thursday, Metallica and Miley Cyrus appeared on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show — with Elton John on Zoom to offer his personal tribute to the band. Metallica was promoting both the new multi-media box set edition of their self-titled 1991 set, better known to fans as the “Black Album,” as well as companion covers collection, titled, The Metallica Blacklist, which features Elton and Cyrus' cover of “Nothing Else Matters.”
In addition to performing the classic ballad with Cyrus, Metallica also tackled the “Black Album's” “Sad But True.”
Elton John told Stern and the band that he rates “Nothing Else Matters” incredibly high as a piece of music: “This is one of the best songs ever written to me. It's a song that never gets old. The chord structure, the melody, the time changes; it's got drama written all over it. And I have to say, it was no-brainer playing on this song. You can't really define them. They're not a heavy metal band — they're a musical band. Their songs aren't just heavy metal, they're beautiful songs. This is such a melodic song.