Celebrate James Hetfield’s Fiftieth Birthday with the Fifty Best Metallica Songs of All Time

Last weekend, Mick Jagger turned seventy (!!!), and classic rock radio stations across the country celebrated by counting down the top seventy Rolling Stones songs of all time.

And since tomorrow, Saturday, August 3, is James Hetfield’s fiftieth birthday (!!!!!!!!!!!), I am now basically going to steal that idea, only I’m not gonna “count down,” because, frankly, I think trying to figure out, say, if “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is a better or worse song than “Disposable Heroes” is a futile endeavor. So I’m just gonna provide you with a playlist of the fifty best Metallica songs, and leave it at that.

Of course, DJs celebrating Mr. Jagger’s birthday had a somewhat easier task than I, since Jagger has made a substantially larger body of worthwhile (that is, not lame) work than Hetfield has. Even if you include all the material from the first five Metallica albums, you’re only left with forty-six songs (forty-seven if you count “Anesthesia,” which I don’t think you can in this instance), meaning I had to draw three from their post-Black Album output. And using covers seemed like cheating, and fuck St. Anger and double-fuck Lulu. So that left the Loads, S&M, and Death Magnetic. Oh well.

Still, I hope this brings you some pleasure this weekend:

Happy birthday, James! Now please consider retirement.