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Kelly Clarkson‘s much-anticipated 10th studio album, Chemistry is on the way. Tonight (April 14), Clarkson has kicked off her impending era with a pair of new songs.

On “Mine,” a freshly divorced Clarkson looks back on her marriage with grief and disappointment in the fact that she stayed for so long. Over a somber piano, she holds onto hope that someone will give her ex-husband a taste of his own medicine.

“Go ahead and break my hеart, that’s fine / So unkind / Eternal sunshine of thе spotless mind / Oh, love is blind / Why am I missing you tonight? / Was it all a lie? / Someone’s gonna show you how a heart can be used / Like you did mine,” Clarkson sings on the song’s chorus.

“Me” features Clarkson singing from a more assured place, belting out some of the best vocals of her career, and setting the stage for a happy, confident new era.

“I don’t need somebody to hold me / Don’t need somebody to love me / Don’t need somebody to pick these pieces up / I put together my broken / Let go of the pain I’vе been holdin’ / Don’t need to need somebody / When I got me,” she sings on the chorus of what’s sure to be one of the year’s biggest empowerment anthem.

According to Clarkson, the upcoming album will put a wide range of emotions on display, detailing a relationship from beginning to end.

“Having chemistry with someone is an incredible, and overwhelming, feeling,” said Clarkson in a statement. “It’s like you have no choice
in the matter. You are just drawn to each other. This can be good and bad. This album takes you down every path that chemistry could lead you down.”

You can check out “Me” and “Mine” above, and find the Chemistry album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “Skip This Part”
2. “Mine”
3. “High Road”
4. “Me”
5. “Down To You”
6. “Chemistry”
7. “Favorite Kind Of High”
8. “Magic”
9. “Lighthouse”
10. “Rock Hudson”
11. “My Mistake”
12. “Red Flag Collector”
13. “I Hate Love” Feat. Steve Martin
14. “That’s Right” Feat. Sheila E.

Chemistry is out 6/23 via Atlantic. Find more information here.

Kelly Clarkson is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Today, Metallica will release their 11th album, 72 Seasons. Later this month, they will begin playing those songs in stadiums all over the world. In my town, a pair of local Metallica shows were announced in the fall of 2022. They will not take place until August … of 2024. This, in a nutshell, is the magnitude of this band. They do not perform regular rock concerts. Their concerts are more like Olympic ceremonies.

How did they get here? After all, we’re talking about a band that was so widely hated in the nascent metal scene of early 1980s Los Angeles — the feeling was mutual — that they felt compelled to move 400 miles north. At that point, it hardly seemed like they were destined to take over the world. One look at the band photo on the back cover of their 1983 debut LP Kill ‘Em All reveals, quite possibly, the ugliest metal group to ever emerge from the primordial ooze. They made Lemmy Kilmister look like Bradley Cooper.

And yet, less than a decade later, Metallica was already one of the biggest bands on the planet. So, again: How in the hell did this happen?

I have some thoughts on this. And I would like to share them via this list of my 40 favorite Metallica songs. Let’s ride the lightning. Take my hand. Exit light. Enter my list.

PRE-LIST INTRO MUSIC: “THE ECSTASY OF GOLD”

When you hear this music, you know one of two things are about to happen. The first is you are about to see the thrilling conclusion to one of the most thrilling films ever made, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. The second is that you are about to see the most successful metal band who ever lived. Either way, an epic experience is on your immediate horizon. (I understand that a list of Metallica songs might not qualify as “epic.” But it is certainly epic in relation to other lists.)

In the annals of rock ‘n’ roll walk-on music, “The Ecstasy Of Gold” is the best. Nothing comes close. Metallica instituted it in their pre-Kill ‘Em All days at the suggestion of Jonny Zazula, the founder of their original label, Megaforce Records. And they’ve never stopped using it. That’s because “The Ecstasy Of Gold” is extremely Metallica. The music simply wouldn’t work for any other band. If you play Ennio Morricone before you walk on stage, you better back it up with a sound that is equally sweeping, powerful, bloody, and grandiose. You can’t put on “The Ecstasy Of Gold” and then bring out Plain White T’s or Peter Bjorn and John. You must produce a band that actually includes the good (Kirk), the bad (Lars), and the ugly (James). And that band, obviously, is the one and only Metallica.

(In this analogy, the headstone belonging to Arch Stanton signifies Metallica’s bass players, past and present as well as living and dead, and also Dave Mustaine.)

40. “Am I Evil?” (Live in Moscow ’91 version)

In 2016, James Hetfield appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The conversation begins as you would probably expect. When discussing his recent move from the Bay Area — where James and Lars Ulrich migrated in the early ’80s at the behest of their mad genius bass player, Cliff Burton — to a new compound in Colorado, Hetfield comes this close to saying that San Francisco is now too woke for his blood. None of this is a surprise. Given that this man was seen in the 2004 documentary Some Kind Of Monster hunting bears in Russia makes it all the more amazing that he lasted in one of America’s most liberal cities for as long as he did.

What happens next, however, is a surprise. Somehow, it comes up that James has a passion for beekeeping. And it turns out that Joe Rogan is very interested in this. Way more interested than anyone who is not a beekeeper has ever been in discussing bees. So they spend the next 30 minutes talking about bees. Which seems like a long time for James Hetfield and Joe Rogan to talk about bees. But at some point, the bee talk stops being about just bees and becomes a way for James to reveal an essential part of himself.

Before we continue, I should state something plainly: James Hetfield is the most interesting part of Metallica to me. He is unquestionably one of the greatest metal frontmen ever, even though he does none of the things that metal frontmen traditionally do. He is not a natural-born showman and outlandish character (like Ozzy Osbourne). He does not have an operatic vocal range (like Ronnie James Dio). He does not have an athletic stage presence or a license to pilot Boeing 747s (like Bruce Dickinson). He did not smuggle leather gear associated with gay subcultures of the 1980s into one of the most overtly macho genres of music ever (like Rob Halford). James Hetfield is surly. He is growly. But he is also vulnerable and fragile. He appears to be simultaneously indestructible and irreparably damaged. He is a sweet man who pretends to be scary. James Hetfield is his audience.

Back to the bees. In the interview, James talks about how the time spent at home in the immediate aftermath of a Metallica tour inevitably entails dealing with a form of PTSD. (Kirk Hammett has used similar language to describe his post-tour mental health.) And one of the things that helps him stay sane is looking at his bees. The bees are frantic. They are busy. They can’t stop. And that mayhem relaxes him. The mayhem is what puts him at peace.

A certain kind of person will read that and laugh. This same kind of person is also inclined to dismiss Some Kind Of Monster as the real-life This Is Spinal Tap. (As opposed to appreciating the film as the real-life This Is Spinal Tap.) He will laugh at the suggestion that being the focal point of Metallica is in any way like fighting in a war.

If you are this person, I recommend watching the video above of Metallica performing its iconic cover of a once-obscure Diamond Head song. (Metallica made Diamond Head famous.) It took place in front of an audience of … well, actually nobody knows exactly how many people. Some say 500,000 people. It could be one million. Suffice it to say, it’s way more people than you or I will ever perform for in a lifetime, much less during a single concert.

Now. imagine standing in front of that many people, and seeing the helicopters buzz the crowd and Soviet soldiers pacifying the moshers while on horseback, and asking that mass of humanity the following question:

Am I evil?

“I am, man,” you say. “I am evil.” And all of those people say it with you, affirming the validity of your response.

I’m just saying: You might also want to hang out with bees and only bees after that sort of head trip.

39. “The God That Failed” (1991)

I have a theory about superstar musical acts, and it goes like this: Everyone has what I call a “fulcrum album” in their catalog. This is a record that explains the particular act’s entire career, in the sense that 1) all of the albums that precede it feel like a journey to this culmination point and 2) all of the records after feel like a reaction to the fulcrum album’s commercial success and/or artistic breakthroughs. I once wrote a book suggesting that Kid A is that album for Radiohead. I am currently writing a book arguing that argues Born In The U.S.A. is that album for Bruce Springsteen. But you can do this for other superstars. For The Beatles, it was Sgt. Pepper. For Prince, it was Purple Rain. For U2, it’s The Joshua Tree. For Taylor Swift, it’s 1989. And for Metallica, it’s 1991’s Metallica, a.k.a. “The Black Album.”

Metallica has been so big for so long that people forget that for the first decade or so of their career, they were the world’s most popular underground band. I don’t mean “underground” to suggest they were merely edgy or countercultural. Their whole M.O. was to be the antithesis of what mainstream media and radio cared about. They were willfully repellent. That was the identity of Metallica, and it was the identity of people who liked Metallica.

That all changed with “The Black Album,” which was immediately apparent to anyone who was paying attention at the time except the members of Metallica. “This whole thing was done our way.” Ulrich insisted to Rolling Stone at the time. “There is an inner satisfaction about that, to give a major ‘fuck you’ to the business itself and the way you’re supposed to play the game and the way we dealt with all that shit up through the mid-’80s.”

Is creating the best-selling rock album of the Soundscan era really a “fuck you” to the music business? It’s kind of like arguing that Avatar was a “fuck you” to the CGI business. What “The Black Album” did was make it possible for people who did not know or care about Diamond Head to get into Metallica. A song like “The God That Failed” was accessible whether you liked Soundgarden, Motley Crue, or Color Me Badd. And that was obvious both from the album sales and the way Metallica was now talked about. “Sociologically, it’s the album that will make it safe to like Metallica,” Spin declared in a ’91 cover story, a statement that was both patronizing and true.

38. “The Day That Never Comes” (2008)

The success of “The Black Album” prompted two different reactions from Metallica that informed their subsequent career arc. Let’s discuss the second reaction first.

In the 21st century, Metallica albums have been self-consciously hard and decidedly un-pop. That was true of St. Anger, the first Metallica LP to explicitly reference the animating emotion of their music in the album title. It was also true of 2016’s Hardwired … To Self-Destruct, the only Metallica studio LP (aside from the new one, which I haven’t heard yet) to not have any songs on this list. (It’s a solid listen, but the album cover is so repulsive that it actively discourages me from reaching for it.)

The Metallica record between those albums, 2008’s Death Magnetic, also has a deliberate “metal” edge encouraged by producer Rick Rubin, who pushed the guys to emulate their Master Of Puppets prime. But the reason I’m including this song is because it’s the rarest of all tracks on a late-period Metallica record — a power ballad.

That’s right: I’m outing myself as a lover of Metallica balladry, as we will see as this list unfolds. “The Day That Never Comes” actually sounds like a compendium of all Metallica ballads — it has the slow creep of “Fade To Black” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” a melodic guitar lick that recalls “Nothing Else Matters,” and the third act fireworks of “One.” It’s really good homage by Metallica in the aughts to Metallica in the ’80s.

37. “Junior Dad” (2011)

Metallica’s participation with Lou Reed in Lulu must be counted as their most extreme rebellion from the long shadow of “The Black Album.” And I’m not just saying that because I have a perverse love of this record and I was desperate for an excuse to shoehorn “Junior Dad” — a.k.a. the relatively coherent 19-minute “pop” song on Lulu — into this list. I truly believe you can’t understand Metallica without taking this album (or at least the idea of this album) into account. In commercial terms, it is the inverse of “The Black Album.” It’s possible that only a band who has sold over 100 million records worldwide could slip Lulu into Best Buy stores from coast to coast and come out of it relatively unscathed. Even if you hate it as music, as a concept “Junior Dad” is incredibly courageous.

36. “Whiskey In The Jar” (1998)

Metallica’s first reaction to “The Black Album” was to transform themselves in the late ’90s into the world’s most prominent post-grunge band.

Surveying 1996’s Load and 1997’s Reload, the highest compliment I can pay those records is that Metallica produced the best possible versions of a standard Creed or Days Of The New track. I realize this doesn’t sound like a compliment, and it sort of isn’t, considering how ridiculously padded and overproduced Load and Reload are. (More on those albums in a moment.) When it comes to late ’90s Metallica, I prefer Garage Inc., where they apply their soul-patched muscularity to material that was simply better and more appealing than most of the songs that Metallica themselves were coming up with at the time.

That is most true of their cover of this Irish standard popularized in the rock world by Thin Lizzy. I turned 21 the year this cover was released, and it was virtually impossible to walk into a dirtbag bar in the late ’90s and not hear Metallica’s “Whiskey In The Jar.” This song is also a good excuse to discuss the James Hetfield vocal delivery, in which it sounds like he’s sandwiching “yeeeeeeah!” inside of every other word, like “Molly’s chamb-yeeeeeeah–ers” or “stand and delive-yeeeeeeah–r!” That “yeeeeeeah!” is essential to any James Hetfield impression. I am doing that “yeeeeeeah!” right now.

(Honorary shoutout to the cover of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page,” the bleakest Metallica video with the possible exception of “One.”)

35. “Hero Of The Day” (1996)

Load is Metallica’s good “bad” album, the one whose flaws provide an insightful contrast illuminating what Metallica does well. It’s a record I like to think about and dislike actually hearing. The philosophy behind the album is sound: “The Black Album” entered the world six weeks before Nevermind, and its massive success grandfathered Metallica into an era where practically every other ’80s metal band fell by the wayside, at least in the mainstream. So, why not rebrand?

They did this literally. The band logo changed. The lightning bolts affixed to the “M” and the “A” were gone. A new sans-lightning font was subbed in. The brand was effectively de-evil’ed.

Unfortunately, there were two problems. One, they waited so long to make a follow-up that grunge was also dead by the time Load came out. (Metallica faced a similar problem when they embraced the sonic characteristics of nü-metal on St. Anger right when the public had soured of nü-metal.) Two, Lars and Kirk took the creative reins from James, and the majority of their artistic decisions at the time were motivated by a toxic combination of drugs and an impulse to troll their singer. (Hence the publicity shots featuring prominent nipple rings and drummer-on-guitarist makeout action.)

Not all Het-trolling is bad, however. In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, for instance, James claims to not like The Beatles. And then somebody plays “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” on the tour bus and James goes nuts. “That’s pretty fucking hot,” he says, unaware that he’s headbanging to Abbey Road. Flash forward seven years, and “Hero Of The Day” kind of recycles that same riff.

34. “Fuel” (1997)

The other notable thing about “Hero Of The Day” is that it was the first (and only?) funny (on purpose?) Metallica music video. Did the world need a comedic Metallica? Now, that is a different question.

Here’s an even less urgent inquiry: Which album is better, Load or Reload? Clearly, Reload was a sequel that few people wanted. (It’s the Paul Blart: Mall Cop Part 2 of ’90s rock albums.) But I would actually argue that the peaks of Reload exceed those of Load, which is otherwise more consistent overall (though only in a relative sense). In terms of writing the best possible version of a Creed banger, “Fuel” is hard to beat.

33. “The Memory Remains” (1997)

This song was a fixture on MTV at a time when post-mortem hits by Biggie Smalls and Tupac were dominating the airwaves. And yet nobody sounded more like an undead zombie than Marianne Faithfull in the outro to “The Memory Remains.”

32. “St. Anger” (2003)

Cards on the table time: I’m a St. Anger defender. I think it’s their best post-“Black Album” record. I don’t even mind Lars’ wretched snare sound at this point. Weird, I know. But I didn’t always feel that way. Until recently, I judged the record via the prism of Some Kind Of Monster. I suspect that’s how most people judge St. Anger. And that’s why most people consider it a “genuinely horrible” record. This is unfair. As a rock film, Some Kind Of Monster is one of the best (if not the best) of the 21st century. But as a commercial for St. Anger, it’s a sales pitch on par with Gimme Shelter promoting the Hell’s Angels.

The impression you get from the film is that the making of St. Anger was a largely joyless exercise and that the album’s carcass was dragged across the finish line by rock management ghouls obsessed with keeping this four-headed multi-national corporation afloat. But the actual record has a lot of the same qualities of the film, i.e. it’s a frank look at how men confront middle age by shedding the asshole armor they were conditioned to wear in their teens and 20s. And the rawness of a song like “St. Anger” chronicles that process in real time; it sounds ugly because it is ugly.

31. “Some Kind Of Monster” (2003)

Of course, the aforementioned people who are inclined to see Some Kind Of Monster as a joke will also guffaw when they hear James scream, “I want my anger to be healthy!” So be it. I understand where James is coming from. I want my anger to be healthy, too.

All great rock movies are about more than just rock musicians. In the case of Some Kind Of Monster, you can enjoy it as a depiction of a super-successful band imploding 20 years into their existence. Or you can examine it as a depiction of a common dynamic between adult males who grew up together, a la James and Lars, without achieving true intimacy. Here are guys who bonded over music and binge drinking and cutthroat competition, and that’s not unique only to rock stars. It is, in fact, the way of the world for countless men who will never scream at half a million people in Russia.

But there is hope. You can go to group therapy. You can say the F-word six inches from your friend’s face. You can hire Ozzy Osbourne’s good-natured bass player. And then, maybe, you will find that you can still produce a powerful groove-metal number like this one.

30. “Frantic” (2003)

Some Kind Of Monster is also an example of insightful music criticism. I refer to the scene in which the band is discussing the utility of guitar solos in the modern age. And Kirk Hammett, amiable peace-keeping lead guitarist, finally loses his temper. “Can I say something that I think is bullshit?” he rhetorically asks. Kirk then explains that deciding not to include guitar solos because they happen to not be fashionable at this particular moment in time will make the record sound dated to this particular moment in time.

This is a great point. And it also highlights the singularity of “Frantic” as the only album opener in Metallica history to not have a guitar solo. (And, yes, that makes it sound extremely 2003.)

29. “Hit The Lights” (1983)

This, on the other hand, is the epitome of six-string thrash-metal napalm being sprayed wildly like it’s the opening scene of Apocalypse Now. And it does not sound necessarily like 1983, It just sounds like Metallica.

Hammett had recently replaced former lead guitarist Dave Mustaine right before the making of Kill ‘Em All, and he proved a natural fit with the preexisting ego structure in the band. Anyone who is casually conversant with Metallica history knows that Mustaine was dismissed with an early morning wake-up call and bus ticket back to the West Coast because of his excessive drinking. And this has always seemed odd given the band’s “Alcoholica” rep at the time.

Ultimately, I think it fails to tell the entire story. Because Metallica is the only metal band ever where the lead guitarist is not the most famous (or at worst second most famous) person in the band. Along with the White Stripes and Black Keys, Metallica has the exceedingly rare molecular rock band structure where the rhythm guitarist and drummer represent the central power couple. (And, of course, it’s doubly unique considering Metallica is not a two-person blues-rock combo.)

That simply would not have worked with Mustaine in the band. He would not have provided the Derek Smalls’ “lukewarm water” steadiness that Hammett has supplied. He would have inserted himself between James and Lars in a way that would have likely imploded by the time of Ride The Lightning.

28. “Fight Fire With Fire” (1984)

Speaking of the second LP and album openers with guitar solos that hit your eardrums like a fleet of piranhas engaging with a submerged warthog: Ride The Lightning is my favorite Metallica album. I realize that Master Of Puppets is considered the thrash landmark and the height of the Cliff Burton era, and “The Black Album” is the popular favorite that includes their most famous songs. But I still ride with Ride. Particularly Side 1, the best LP side in the catalog, which is kicked off ably with this scorcher.

27. “The Thing That Should Not Be” (1986)

Let me stress that Master Of Puppets comes in very close second for me. I wonder how Master would have turned out if they had hired the producer they originally had in mind for the project: Geddy Lee. Apparently, Geddy was too busy at the time to commit — he had just finished recording my favorite Rush album of the ’80s, Power Windows, when work on Master commenced — but let’s imagine the “Geddy Lee produces Master Of Puppets” scenario had been allowed to unfold. It’s possible that Metallica’s third record would have been as convoluted and proggy as their fourth album, …And Justice For All. (Though, unlike that record, you would have been able to hear the bass.) Then again, this was in the middle of Rush’s “synthesizer” period, so perhaps “The Thing That Should Not Be” — one of the more straightforward tracks on Masters — would have sounded like Dio-era Sabbath.

26. “Blackened” (1988)

Here’s another Metallica hypothetical with far greater implications: What if Cliff Burton hadn’t died? Would they have made …And Justice For All to begin with? This question is predicated on the premise — which I happen to believe — that the members of Metallica created the angriest, most punishing and stupidly complicated music of their lives as a way of denying their grief. This process obviously involves their treatment of Jason Newsted, the former fanboy whose desire to penetrate the band’s inner circle exacerbated the impulses of the others to freeze him out. This happened socially, creatively and (in the case of this album) sonically. At least Jason was given a co-write on this song, the album’s opener.

INTERMISSION

During the writing and researching of this column I did an informal poll of drummers in which I posed the following question: Is Lars Ulrich any good?

Here is a sampling of the response:

Drummer No. 1: “Hard no. Also, egregious tone.”

Drummer No. 2: “He’s the worst drummer. Ever.”

Drummer No. 3: “Yep. …And Justice For All is a progressive metal masterpiece.”

25. “The Shortest Straw” (1988)

I also play drums, and I suck. My tone is beyond egregious. So take my opinion with a grain of salt: I agree with Drummer No. 3. Lars whips ass on Justice, as evidenced by the first track on Side 2.

24. “Eye Of The Beholder” (1988)

Then again, the problem with Justice is that it whips ass a little too much. At least that was the consensus among the brain trust in the album’s aftermath as they opted to change course and pursue concise rock songwriting on “The Black Album.” I happen to enjoy the excess of Justice, but in the case of this song it’s hard to deny that Metallica was actively sabotaging catchy riff machines with more time signature changes than Brain Salad Surgery.

23. “Whiplash” (1983)

According to Mick Wall’s 2012 book Enter Night: A Biography Of Metallica, Lars Ulrich is the one responsible for Metallica songs being so goddamn long. “In the past we’d do a rough version of a song and I’d go home and time it and go, ‘It’s only seven and a half minutes!’” he told Wall at the time of Master Of Puppets. “Fuck, we’ve got to put another couple of riffs in there.” The charm of Kill ‘Em All is that the tracks haven’t yet been subject to this policy of enforced elephantiasis. “Whiplash” enters the room, kills ’em all, and exits in a brutally efficient four minutes and nine seconds.

22. “…And Justice For All” (1988)

The quote above offers some insight into the songwriting process of Hetfield and Ulrich, which as I understand it works like this: James writes almost all of the riffs and lyrics, and Lars arranges them into songs. Hetfield seemed to confirm this in a 2022 New Yorker profile, in which he claimed, “He looks at music as a math equation, I look at it as a flowing river.” He could have also said, “I supply the lumber, and he turns it into a house.” It’s the kind of arrangement that makes each man dependent on the other, which makes their relationship invaluable and (I’m speculating) maddening.

A detail from a 2008 Rolling Stone article sticks with me: Early on during the making of Death Magnetic, Lars tried to institute a once-a-week movie night, as a way of inspiring James to write the sorts of storytelling lyrics he composed in the ’80s. Back then they did this often — the title song from Justice, for example, was inspired by the 1979 legal drama of the same name starring Al Pacino. (If you haven’t seen it, the film is nowhere near as grim as the album.) But James wasn’t into it. Eventually, he came up with ideas on his own, and Lars accepted that he had to let his partner “go off on this by himself.”

Part of me wonders if Lars just wanted to bro out like they used to over some flicks.

21. “Leper Messiah” (1986)

“I think the guy is a genius,” Ulrich says of Hetfield in that Rolling Stone profile. “I also have to deal with that genius.” Here is an example of James’ genius: In “Leper Messiah,” the climax comes when he starts chanting “lie,” which sounds like the part in “Creeping Death” where he starts chanting “die.” It’s the same but different, and works very well both times. It makes me think that Justice should have had a song where James screams “why” or “try” or “fly” or “Bill Nye The Science Guy.”

20. “Damage, Inc.” (1986)

As a lyricist, James Hetfield in the ’80s was rock’s angriest skeptic. Religion, the government, life itself — he was against it all. He also, naturally, hated glam metal. As the Master sessions commenced, Metallica played the Monsters Of Rock at Castle Donington, which was headlined by ZZ Top and also included paragons of poodle-haired rock like Bon Jovi and Ratt. This inspired one of James’ all-time on-stage rants: “If you came here to see spandex and fuckin’ eye makeup and all that shit, and the words ‘rock & roll, baby’ in every fuckin’ song, this ain’t the fuckin’ band. We came here to bash some fucking heads.”

More than any other track on Master Of Puppets, “Damage, Inc.” — in which he rails against corporate culture right as Metallica was entering the big-money major-label world — is the one where they bash some fucking heads.

19. “Harvester Of Sorrow” (1988)

James Hetfield came by his skepticism naturally. As a teenager, he was raised as a Christian Scientist, and his lack of faith alienated him from his family. Then his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he watched as she refused medical treatment for the disease that gradually overtook her. Years later, his father — who abandoned the family before his mother passed — died in similar fashion.

In this song, the young protagonist responds to his dysfunctional family situation by killing off his kin. This is a very metal idea for a song, but it’s also … kind of grunge, too? From a lyrical perspective, “Harvester Of Sorrow” is similar to the perspective that Eddie Vedder supplied for Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut, Ten. Both Hetfield and Vedder became avatars for angry kids who felt abused or ignored by their parents. And this shared sensibility helps to explain why Metallica flourished in the ’90s as most of their peers on that Monsters Of Rock bill faded. The sentiments of a song like “Harvester Of Sorrow” went from seeming irredeemably dark in 1988 to weirdly commercial just a few years later.

18. “Disposable Heroes” (1986)

One area where Metallica have never gotten their due is as the most prominent purveyor of anti-war protest songs during the Reagan era. “One” is their most famous anthem in this mode, but “Disposable Heroes” is actually more brutal, with James spitting out venom over the senseless sacrifices of young men chewed up by the war machine. Along with Guns N’ Roses’ “Civil War,” this was the kind of song that spoke directly to the blue-collar guys who were most likely to be sent off to fight, which made it essential counter-programming during perhaps the most unrelentingly jingoistic decade in modern American history.

17. “The Four Horsemen” (1983)

Then again, I don’t want to make it sound like we’re talking about the leather-jacketed Noam Chomsky here. James Hetfield himself objected to Metallica being classified as an anti-war band in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview. “We got called a political band around … And Justice For All, and it really scared us,” he tells David Fricke, “because that’s not what we want to write about forever.” He then proceeded to defend the very dumb “Black Album” deep cut “Don’t Tread On Me,” in which James quotes the melody from West Side Story‘s “America” in the riff and snarls, “Love it or leave it, she with the deadly bite!”

Truth be told, there are just as many Metallica songs — if not more — about how murdering people is awesome. Take, for example, this galloping classic from Kill ‘Em All, a pro-apocalypse number to end all pro-apocalypse numbers.

16. “Ride The Lightning” (1984)

It’s time to settle an imaginary controversy: When exactly did Jeffrey Lebowski work as a Metallica roadie? As we all remember, Lebowski worked briefly in the music business as part of the band’s crew on the “Speed Of Sound” tour, and came away thinking that they were a “bunch of assholes.”

Now, this tour does not actually exist. But if it did exist, when would it have happened? The “bunch of assholes” comments suggests that it was during the Mustaine era. (Mustaine is the epitome of “being very un-Dude.”) However, I think it was the Ride The Lightning period. By that time, Metallica was getting popular enough to hire an extra roadie who was also quite possibly the laziest man in Los Angeles County. Also, when you get to about the 3:40 mark of this song, Metallica truly does match the speed of sound.

15. “Battery” (1986)

Let’s circle back to the Ride The Lightning vs. Master Of Puppets discussion. Like I said, I prefer the former. However, there is no denying that Master Of Puppets plays like a deliberate “improvement” on its predecessor, in terms of sounding better, bigger, and tighter. It’s just that, in most cases, I prefer the rough draft to the beefed-up redux. An exception to this rule is “Battery,” the Master Of Puppets opener that is an obvious rewrite of the side 1, track 1 from Ride The Lightning, “Fight Fire With Fire.” But this time, the ‘roided-out assault is too overwhelming to deny.

14. “Orion” (1986)

Cliff Burton’s acknowledged musical swan song, “Orion” exhibits his rare ability to fuse metal with the blues and Bach and have it not seem contrived. Again, the “What if Cliff hadn’t died?” hypothetical is the most consequential in the history of Metallica. (For one thing, it seems likely that they would have jammed with a symphony orchestra about a decade earlier than they did.)

The surviving members still haven’t gotten over the loss. A detail that sticks with me: In that 1993 Rolling Stone interview, James Hetfield marvels over the size of Cliff’s middle finger. “It was huge,” he says. And then he reminisces about Cliff’s pants. “We gave him shit about his bell-bottoms every day. He didn’t care. ‘This is what I wear. Fuck you.’” This is the kind of stuff you remember when your pal is tragically killed at age 24.

13. “Enter Sandman” (1991)

A classic case of something I often do with these lists, which is penalize a great song because I’ve heard it 12 million times. In the case of “Enter Sandman,” special recognition must be given to Lars, who 1) rearranged the original riff formulated by Kirk Hammett to make it extra hooky and 2) insisted that it be the lead single from “The Black Album.” Apparently, the rest of the band and producer Bob Rock wanted to go with “Holier Than Thou,” which is now known as the track that most people skip on the record to get from “Sad But True” to “The Unforgiven.”

12. “Sad But True” (1991)

The key to “The Black Album” sound is the third rhythm guitar track overlaid on each song that Hetfield dubbed “The Thickener.” This song is the ultimate example of The Thickener’s prowess, and an essential text for the groove-metal phenomenon that eventually begat nü-metal. I’m also overdue for a shoutout to Bob Rock, the comically monikered metal producer who sold himself to Metallica as the man who could finally convey their live power on record. Unfortunately, when the Metallica biopic is made they will have to change the name of Metallica’s most important producer, as film critics will find that a character named Bob Rock is too on-the-nose.

11. “The Unforgiven” (1991)

This song is like The Hangover — a big hit that spawned two unnecessary sequels. (Though the franchise did recover some of its luster with “The Unforgiven III,” from Death Magnetic.) This is also another example of Lars’ arrangement skills. It was his idea to make the verses loud and the chorus quiet, an inverse of the ballad structure from “Fade To Black” and “Welcome Home.” Though what really drives “The Unforgiven” home is Kirk’s solo, which — as shown in the A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica documentary — resulted from Bob Rock bullying the normally unflappable Hammett until he snapped and tore off the most pissed-off playing of his career.

10. “Wherever I May Roam” (1991)

The counter-argument to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive.” James Hetfield does not buy into Jon Bon Jovi’s concept of the road being his tormenter. In this song, the road … becomes his bride! He is making sweet, romantic love to the road in “Wherever I May Roam”! And that vibe is infectious. As one of the great “it’s cool as hell to be a rock star” songs, this qualifies as the rare Metallica track that is unapologetically fun. I aspire to one day achieve the power over space and time that James Hetfield exhibits here. The earth becomes his throne! Who wouldn’t want to regard the entire planet as their personal chair?

9. “Creeping Death” (1984)

Ride The Lightning came out the same year as The Replacements’ Let It Be, Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade, and Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime, though it’s never contextualized with those underground indie classics. But when I listen to this song, I feel like it should be.After all this time, can we finally smash the wall between punk and metal? This was underground rock, and it came out on an independent label, and it spoke to disaffected youth. If Hüsker Dü is allowed to hoard umlauts, Metallica should be afforded the same cool kid cred.

8. “Seek And Destroy” (1983)

The perfect thrash metal guitar riff. Subsequent anthems were more musically sophisticated, but “Seek And Destroy” still works because it sounds like a bunch of average-to-solid musicians who discover — through a combination of interpersonal chemistry and internal chemistry altered by Jack Daniels and Jagermeister — that they sound like brilliant world beaters when they come together.

7. “The Call Of Ktulu” (1984)

What’s been lost in the haze of Metallica’s decades-long era of dominance is that being a Metallica fan in the ’80s made you an outcast in most American communities. Which is why the three Paradise Lost films — which document the “West Memphis Three” accused teen killers as they’re convicted, jailed, and then released over the course of 18 years — are as essential to the Metallica story as Some Kind Of Monster, also directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. By 1996, as Lars later related in an interview with Mick Wall, “everything became so blurred. Nowadays, bands are just bands: some are harder, some are softer, but heavy metal and pop and this and that … it’s one big soup.” But Paradise Lost shows a bygone world where being a Metallica-loving teen in a small southern town provokes suspicion that you might be a child-murdering Satanist. This song — which plays throughout the film — also evokes that time for me.

6. “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” (1986)

Another Paradise Lost song. Also, the one that Rivers Cuomo later claimed that he was ripping off when he wrote “Undone (The Sweater Song).” If there’s a better metaphor for how Metallica was mainstreamed from the Reagan ’80s to the Clinton ’90s I have not yet heard it.

5. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” (1984)

Even when Metallica’s music was enjoyed strictly by outcasts, they still wrote songs like they were already playing stadiums. “Stadium rock performed by artists who not yet actually playing stadiums” is possibly my favorite kind of music, and this song personifies the form. The church bells, the bombastically drawn-out intro, the “time marches on!” chant that demands crowd participation — the level of rock-star manifesting going on here is truly inspirational.

4. “Fade To Black” (1984)

You know who else loved Ride The Lightning? Kurt Cobain. He told Kirk Hammett — who was an O.G. Nirvana fan going back to Bleach — that it was one of his favorite albums. Which will only seem strange if you are unaware that Ride The Lightning is an album with loud guitars and a deep preoccupation with death. I won’t speculate about whether this particular track was significant to him. (Apparently Kurt’s favorite Metallica song, according to Kirk, was “Whiplash.”)

3. “Nothing Else Matters” (1991)

Elton John called this one of the best songs ever written and likened the melody to “Greensleeves,” which moved James Hetfield to tears. Having just typed that sentence, it occurs to me that I have unwittingly made the “militant metalhead” case for disqualifying “Nothing Else Matters” from the list. Then again, does the kind of person who hates “Nothing Else Matters” still care about Metallica at this point? The metaphorical utility of resenting a Metallica power ballad as a personal stand against sentimental love songs has long since expired. As Metallica has aged, their earnestness feels purer and more endearing than ever.

(Quick story: I interviewed Kip Winger in 2014, and asked him about the part in the “Nothing Else Matters” video where Lars throws darts at a picture of his face. More than 20 years later, Kip was still not happy about this. “I don’t understand it. And it’s so ironic for a guy like Lars Ulrich to do that when I’ve got [drummer] Rod Morgenstein in my band. It’s a fucking joke.” Put Kip in the “egregious tone” camp.)

2. “Master Of Puppets” (1986)

The key lyric in “Nothing Else Matters” also explains Metallica’s enduring popularity: “I never opened myself this way / Life is ours, we live it our way.” For millions of people, their music articulates what they themselves can’t put into words. A fundamental fact of life is that everybody deep down feels like a misunderstood outsider who yearns for acceptance, while at the same seeking the confidence to be fully who they are. We all want to feel that we are strong, and to also have the strength to show our weaknesses honestly and without apology. And that’s the essence of this song — James Hetfield’s jackhammer downstroke makes you feel like Godzilla, and the long guitar solo in the middle is like seeing your grandfather break down for the first time.

1. “One” (1988)

“Master Of Puppets” is one of the hardest rocking Metallica songs, and also one of the most beautiful. But “One” is the most rocking and the most beautiful. James has said he was drawn to the Dalton Trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun because he could relate to feeling paralyzed in your own body. What he understood — like all great chroniclers of teen angst — is that adolescence is war, and the PTSD lingers well into adulthood. In this life, you cannot live, you cannot die, you are trapped in yourself. But at least there are double bass drum fills and supersonic guitar solos and mustachioed mountain men who feel your pain. They are the baddest bees in the hive. Their mad activity after all these years is soothing. The mayhem keeps us sane.

Note: This is my second-to-last Top Chef Power Rankings post for Uproxx. Follow me on Twitter and/or Patreon for updates on how to find them after that! I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

Every Top Chef season seems to have at least one thoroughly infuriating episode that makes you throw down the remote and swear you’re done with this foamy spectacle once and for all (before you inevitably come crawling back, apologizing to every veloute and gastrique along the way, begging them to once again amuse your bouche). That was this week.

For one thing, it didn’t even have an ending! After a “supersized” 75-minute episode, these bastards really had the gall to end on a cliffhanger. 75 minutes and no conclusion? You have broken the producer-viewer emulsion of trust once and for all, sirs. I said good day!

Okay I’m back. I chopped some shallots into miniscule cubes to help me calm down a bit. In fairness, this episode did have an elimination, it just occurred at the beginning of the show. That was in part two of the two-part finale of Last Chance Kitchen, part one of which aired (streamed?) last week, pulling exactly the same “tune into a different show to see the exciting conclusion” trick as this episode.

We learned this week, following a mostly unnecessary cold open in which Padma showed up at the cheftestant hotel to tell them to come down stairs for a surprise — oh my gosh, PADMA, HERE!? — the last two surviving chefs from Last Chance Kitchen — Dale aka Johnnycakes, and Begoña aka Tílde Thwintón — would be competing against each other for the honor of returning to the show, in an epic showdown pitting tea tower against tea tower. (Can you believe that was all one sentence? I may need to cube some more shallots).

And actually, this challenge was far more infuriating than the fact that this episode didn’t end with an elimination. The two chefs were given ONE HOUR to create a tea tower that included two finger sandwiches, a scone, and a pastry. I’m sorry, but what the hell kind of stupid ass challenge is this? One hour to make multiple pastries? I thought this was Top Chef, not World’s Speediest Baker.

I genuinely hate this as a challenge because it makes me wonder, who would ever need to make multiple pastries in an hour, and what would doing so even prove? This is the exception that proves the rule that “art thrives on limitation.” This limitation sucked the art right out of there. In the end the challenge hinged, naturally, not on who was the most creative or made the best food or had the best concept, but who could actually complete the stated challenge. A test of endurance!

That ended up being Johnnycakes. And sure, maybe I’m a little bitter that my week one top seed is out of the competition, thus proving me a fraud (let the record show that I did correctly pick the winner in episode one last season)… BUT. I think a lot of my annoyance stems from the genuine heartbreak I felt watching Begoña fail to get all of her food on her plates. I felt my stomach drop the same way it did when I’d drop a plate or burn something when I actually worked in a kitchen, which I haven’t done in almost 20 years. I don’t need this kind of verisimilitude in my life, thank you! I give the verisimiddle finger to that!

It genuinely hurt to watch an insanely talented chef who makes whimsical space food (the cream anemone, never forget) have to leave the show because she was 10 seconds late on making two pastries in an hour. Ughhhhh. I guess it’s a credit to the producers for making me care this much. I’ll never forgive the bastards.

After that it was off to Downton Abbey, which is actually called Highclere Castle, for a picnic challenge. British picnics are a lot like American ones, only without all the precocious bears trying to yoink your basket. This also allows me to post one of my all-time favorite SNL digital shorts, “Downton Abbey if it was on SpikeTV.”

Dear olden times, you’re boring.

The chefs split into teams, and, granted immunity, Dale got to choose which team he wanted to be on. They each had 200 pounds to spend at Fortnum & Mason, da personew grociah uv da qween! As well as another 250 pounds to spend at Whole Foods, more like Whole Paycheck! (sorry, had to) All with the goal of creating a team picnic meal, which would “hold well, serve at room temperature, and be easily eaten,” according to Tom Colicchio.

It ended up being fun challenge, mostly because Padma was drinking champagne the entire time. Sharp-eyed viewers may have noted that she seemed at least medium wreck’d for most of the segment. Champagne Padma was first introduced in 2020 and has become probably this show’s best recurring character — characterized by laughing at her own asides, barely getting through critiques without breaking into giggles, and demanding more champagne. I love Champagne Padma. Almost enough to forgive this being a “to be continued” episode.

The Teams

Yellow: Gabri, Tom, Sylwia, Amar, Ali.
Blue: Sara, Charbel, Nicole, Victoire, Buddha, Dale.

Results

“Quickfire” (not really) Top: Dale.
“Quickfire” Bottom: Begoña**.

Elimination Top: Nicole*.
Elimination Bottom: Sylwia. Tom.

*Winner. **Eliminated.

Rankings

12. (-1) ((Eliminated)) (((Again))) Begoña Rodrigo

AKA: Tílde Swintón. Beach Mom. Thtevie Nickth.

As I said above, I was legitimately sad about this elimination. Not necessarily because I like Begoña so much better than Johnnycakes, it just didn’t seem like she got a fair shake. She actually finished finger sandwiches, scones, and eclairs in an hour, and she didn’t even get to serve the eclairs, all because she couldn’t get them on those fussy stacked plates in time. She needed maybe 10 more seconds! That just seemed unnecessarily cruel. Besides, she’s Spanish. You can’t ask a Spaniard to do something on a schedule, that’s like asking a deer to ride a bike.

I admit, I did kind of get a kick out of Begoña frantically running towards her towers with an armful of plates, running into the cameraman, spilling the plates onto the floor where they broke, and then deadpanning “The plates are break.”

The plates are break indeed. I’ve never seen someone go from manic to dead calm in a split second like that, it was a little unnerving.

That being said, not only did Begoña not get her dishes plated in time, the judges didn’t seem to much care for her crab sandwiches either. “I couldn’t tell if this was crab or tuna at first, which seems like a bad thing,” said Padma.

I really hope that was lump crab meat from the fridge or the canned stuff from the pantry (presumably the latter, judging by the fact that it tasted like tuna), because if they made this lady deshell crab, bake scones, and make eclairs from scratch in an hour they should be in prison.

Ah, well, alas. Begoña is gone, supposedly, but I don’t quite believe it yet. I haven’t gotten to the acceptance phase of grief yet.

11. (-2) Sylwia Stachyra

AKA: Auntie Claus. Potato Girl. The Bone.

I didn’t want it to be true, but I can only ignore the writing on the wall for so long: it seems our precious Potato Girl is not long for this competition. She said she was making sü borek this week, which, if you have some Armenian ancestry like me, is a sort of baked mac-and-cheese kinda dish made with noodles or fillo dough. Polish Sylwia explained that the “sü” means “wet,” denoting some kind of wet pastry, which she then compared to the English sausage roll, which is notably not wet. “Only I’m gonna make it like a muffin,” she added.

“Sometimes when we’re eating sausage roll on picnic we think it would be nice to have a sauce what we can dip in,” she went on.

Okay, so wet pastry, which is like a sausage roll, that’s also going to be a muffin, but also it will have a built-in sauce? I think I’m following along, but juuuust barely.

Sylwia’s sauce? Lemon posset, which is apparently like lemon curd. Okay, now you’ve lost me.

“That’s weird,” said Tom.

“It tastes like lemon curd,” added a baffled Padma.

“Confounding,” commented Gail Simmons.

Potato Girl is usually the queen of comfort food, but this might’ve been one of the weirdest dishes ever served on this show, and there have been some doozies. She goes into a head-to-head showdown with Fuckboi Tom in Last Chance Kitchen, and I have to think he’s the favorite.

10. (-3) Victoire Gouloubi

AKA: Al Dente. Minute Rice. Steven Seagal. Three’s Company. Pulp Fiction. Backstory.

Victoire has been all over the place in this competition, and after consecutive episodes detailing her insane journey from refugee to dumpster diving culinary student to acclaimed chef and Top Chef winner who speaks seven languages, she didn’t get much screen time this week. Other than to denote that she would again be sharing a kitchen with chefs cooking with walnuts, which almost killed her two episodes ago. I hope she’s getting hazard pay.

Victoire made a foie gras cabbage roll, which looks elegant enough, but most of the judges found too dense. I love foie gras, but I don’t know if a big tube of it is its ideal form.

9. (-1) Gabri Rodriguez

AKA: The Black Pearl. The Mongoose. Wile Y. Coyote.

One of the low-key worst parts of this episode was watching Fuckboi Tom, who had just spent 160 of his team’s 200-pound budget on 20 pounds of seafood, caviar, and avocados, talk Gabri out of buying sesame seeds. Sesame seeds! How expensive could those have been?

Gabri ended up making this:

Those are some of the most adorably chopped shallots and cucumbers I’ve ever seen. It also looks pretty good. Unfortunately, Gabri had to explain its multiple-part construction to the judges, and the tostada ended up breaking the second they tried to bite in. I’ve had a lot of seafood tostadas, and in my experience, this basically always happens. Mexicans mostly just seem to accept that such is the way of tostadas. The tostada is break.

The stiff upper lips of limey land were making no such concessions, unfortunately, and Gabri only narrowly missed the chopping block. If I could play Monday Morning Chef here, I feel like if Gabri would’ve just served this as a ceviche and had the judges dip their crispy tortilla in there like chips and dip instead, they would’ve loved it. Have you watched this show before? Top Chef judges are demons for ceviche.

8. (+2) Nicole Gomes

AKA: Clawhoser. The Contessa. Kindergarten Cop.

Ay, check out the big win for Kindergarten Cop! This came as a huge surprise, because my first thought when Nicole decided she was going to make a nicoise salad was, “Wow, that sounds boring as hell.”

And my reaction was nothing compared to Tom Colicchio’s when he found out Nicole was making it with salmon instead of tuna. I thought he was going to start flipping over tables! Nothing makes these snoots madder than a petty squabble over nomenclature.

Instead the judges ended up loving it, which I have to think was partly a function of all Canadians knowing exactly how to cook a salmon, and partly that it sounded so boring that when it was actually good, everyone was pleasantly surprised. A big win for lowered expectations!

Maybe Nicole deserves a bigger bump in the rankings, but I’m not quite ready to give it to her. Probably it’s just misdirected anger towards all my elementary school teachers she reminds me of.

7. (-3) Tom Goetter

AKA: Meekus. Sprockets. F*ckboi Tom. Spotted Ox Hostel.

I can’t decided whether I love Tom or love to be annoyed by him. I actually rolled my eyes this week when he pulled out his junior high science fair molecular gastronomy kit again this week.

Tom’s justifications for all of it seemed even more ridiculous. Whomst among us could quibble with the unassailable logic that sometimes olive oil makes a salad too oily?! Solution? Turn it into a dust, of course. Everyone loves eating dust!

This was all in the service of a “cioppino salad” that Tom initially figured would “cost maybe 20 bucks.”

This “cioppino salad” (a what now?), which included such classic cioppino ingredients as caviar and avocados, ended up burning 160 of his team’s 200 pound budget, all for a baffling dish whose main ingredient seemed to be tomatoes. He turned the caviar, one of the most defined-by-its-delicate-texture ass ingredients in existence, into a chip. To top it all off, he introduced it with an even more baffling sentence, “When I do barbecues, usually we do cioppino…”

The judges were even angrier at this weird ass dish than I am. Tom goes up against Sylwia in a head-to-head elimination match he’s probably going to win.

6. (even) Charbel Hayek

AKA: Soup Nazi. Sir Davos.

The Onion Knight made some dips this week. Literally some dips, with a cute lil’ crudité platter. He seemed to think this was a “brave” choice, and amazingly, the judges agreed with him.

So, so brave.

I dunno, man. That must’ve been some pretty good goddamned hummus, because if someone served me that and called it lunch I’d be stomping off that picnic blanket in a huff.

5. (+7) Dale Mackaye

AKA: Johnnycakes. Lance Farmstrong. Minor Threat. Deviled Egg Dale.

Ayyy, check out the big win for Dale! Our favorite Sasketchawiener is back, baby!

Okay, I was maybe a bit unfair in characterizing Dale’s victory in the Last Chance Kitchen finale as a Begoña screwup. Dale did actually manage to do all of that in an hour, complete with a scone that actually looked pretty good. After that impressive showing, we were treated to a little “better know your Dale” editing package, complete with clips of a younger Dale being a bit of a tyrant in the kitchen. I call it the “I used to be a piece of shit” montage.

Spiked up blonde hair, little bitty jeans, chicken spaghetti at Chickelittis…

Luckily, Dale chilled out over the years, thanks to getting really into triathlons. As I always say, extreme distance running is a great way to take all that anger and really channel it into avoiding your family.

Anyway, Dale returns to the power rankings all the way up at number five. What can I say, he crushed it this week, first by working his ass off in the tea tower challenge and then by playing it smart. Knowing he had immunity, Dale made a deviled egg, arguably the greatest no-brainer picnic dish of all time. Even a bad deviled egg is still pretty good. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten less than six of them. Not only that, Dale symbolically exorcised his egg demons from week three, when he went home for a sub-par Scotch egg.

Now that the old egg magic is back, Dale looks to be a force to be reckoned with.

4. (-2) Ali Ghzawi

AKA: RRR. Maui Wowie. The Strain. The Ghizza. Muhammara Ali.

Ali telling the team he wanted to make a “nice mezze platter” was almost as predictable as Tom breaking out the agar-agar chemistry set. The difference being that everyone generally seems to enjoy Ali’s mezze. Much like Charbel, the Jordanian Heartthrob also basically made a dip, but at least Ali made a creative vessel for his.

A muhammara lettuce wrap? Hey, why not. Probably my biggest dilemma in this week’s ranking is who is on top between BFFs Ali and Amar.

3. (+2) Amar Santana

AKA: Big Sleazy. Laughtrack. Hibbert. Flava Flav.

Big Sleazy has spent most of this season bigging up his fellow contestants, laughing supportively at their crap jokes and hyping up Ali like Ali’s personal Flava Flav. He opened this week in much the same fashion, trying to counsel Chef Gabri from the perspective of an older guy who’s been there. Amar really does seem like the most care-free Top Chef contestant since Sheldon Simeon. When the other chefs started sprinting around the fancy grocery store, Amar just laughed. “Haha, I’m not running.”

You could do worse, in terms of mantras. All Americans could take a lesson from Amar.

He ended up dedicating a flan to his mother, which the judges loved, and there’s a good chance he would’ve won the challenge if he hadn’t been on a team with Sylwia and Tom. That’s two or three solid performances in a row for the Dominican Chillnado.

2. (+1) Sara Bradley

AKA: Party Mom. Reebok. Sassparilla.

Again, basically a dead heat between Sara, Amar, and Sylwia in terms of who on the show seems like the best hang. Whereas Sara has mostly avoided screwing up until now, this week seemed like a genuine triumph. If this week’s dishes had been a menu, my first order would’ve been Sara’s charcutified broccolini with a bullet.

That looks good, even if one bread pie eater thought it was “too big.” Sorry, Nigel, that there is a Kentucky small.

Anyway, normally I wouldn’t say I’m the world’s biggest broccoli fan, but broccoli as a vessel for aged cheese, pig fat, cured pig, and truffles? Giddy up. With this dish, Sara breaks into the top two.

1. (even) Buddha Lo

AKA: Moneyball. Double Down. Big Data. Buddha.

Another week without a win for Buddha, another week on top of my power rankings. How to explain? Well, last week I only had Buddha at number one, mostly for lack of anyone else to put there. If Buddha had had another bad week this week, I easily could’ve put Sara, Amar, or Ali in this spot.

Only this week, it felt like Buddha sleepwalked through the challenge and still easily could’ve won. In fact it seemed almost like they were giving him the Cate Blanchett treatment aka the Meryl Streep treatment aka the Olivia Colman treatment (some day it will be the Barry Keoghan treatment). That’s when Olivia Colman doesn’t win an Oscar because she’s so good always and in everything that people just sort of expect it now. Then when she does it again (like in Empire of Light, which was mostly average but she was incredible) it’s so unsurprising that no one really thinks to give her an award. That’s kind of the way it felt with Buddha this week.

He made a banoffee pie contained entirely inside a banana shape, which is somehow obvious, inspired, and too cute by half all rolled into one. Banoffee pie is such an easy, great dessert, and Buddha found such an easy, great way to reinvent it, which was novel and yet straightforward, that all anyone really had to say about it was “yep.”

Of course, no food is ever that obvious — it could’ve been soggy, underseasoned, overseasoned, hard to eat, etc, etc — and so it’s a testament to Buddha that he made it look that obvious. Moneyball, man. The other chefs are going to need a lot more comfort food challenges to take him down, and I don’t see that happening much in a London-based competition where they’ve already done pub food.

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With his deep and abiding love of exploitation films and the wanton wet work in his own filmography, it’s always been a little odd that Quentin Tarantino rarely includes sex with his violence. Speaking with Spanish journalists at Diari ARA (via Variety), the 9-time director explained why.

“It’s true, sex is not part of my vision of cinema,” Tarantino said. “And the truth is that, in real life, it’s a pain to shoot sex scenes, everyone is very tense. And if it was already a bit problematic to do it before, now it is even more so. If there had ever been a sex scene that was essential to the story, I would have, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.”

The answer itself is a mix of pragmatism and artistry, and it makes perfect sense. His films have almost always been about power, cruelty, and bullets than they have about coitus. Less getting together and more tearing people apart.

Besides, try to think of any of his movies where a sex scene might have served the story, as his rubric calls for. It’s not that easy. There’s certainly no reason to cram one into Reservoir Dogs or Inglourious Basterds, and the flirtatious passion of characters like Vincent and Mia or Shosanna and Marcel work far more marvelously than a sex scene would.

Tarantino is currently prepping his 10th and ostensibly final film as a director, aiming to shoot this fall for a project focused on a film critic in the 1970s. Naturally, it signals one last chance to avoid putting sex in a movie.

(via Variety)

Carrying the mother-daughter feels from Everything Everywhere All At Once into real life, Michelle Yeoh thanked her mother during her Oscar acceptance speech, saying, “I have to dedicate this to my mom, all the moms in the world, because they are really the superheroes, and without them, none of us would be here tonight.” She also promised to bring the award back home to Malaysia.

Not only has she done it, she got a fantastic photo of her adorable mom Janet holding the Academy Award statuette to boot.

In her post, she said: “Brought Mr. O home… Without my parents love and trust and support…I wouldn’t be here today…love so much.”

Yeoh’s father, Datuk Yeoh Kian Teik, died in 2014, and she brought the statue to his gravesite to honor him as well.

Obviously, the Daniels‘ film, which won Best Picture and six other Oscars last month, revolves around a daughter’s relationship to her mother as both navigate what they mean to each other, so it’s especially touching that Yeoh has shared this achievement with her parents. No word on whether she gave her mom commemorative hot dog fingers or a big box of googly eyes, though. It might be tough to return home as an Oscar-winning movie star only to hand your mom a pet rock.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

An FBI thriller with Brian Tyree Henry and Kate Mara? From one of the creators of American Crime Story? Questioning the justice of the present and the potential justice of the future? Yes, please.

Class Of ’09‘s trailer gives us a hint of the tone of this crime drama and the scope of how each of the characters joins as outsiders under the FBI banner and then spreads their wings (or plummets to the ground) after their training ends. It’s got a hint of The Recruit, but the emphasis feels squarely on the dramatics and messy human interconnectivity instead of pure twisty goodness.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“Class of ’09 follows a class of FBI agents set in three distinct points in time who grapple with immense changes as the U.S. criminal justice system is altered by artificial intelligence. Spanning multiple decades and told across interweaving timelines, the series examines the nature of justice, humanity and the choices we make that ultimately define our lives and legacy. The series stars Brian Tyree Henry as ‘Tayo,’ one of the most unorthodox agents to ever join the bureau, and Kate Mara as ‘Poet,’ one of the most successful undercover agents of all time.”

The series, which hits FX May 10th, also stars Sepideh Moafi, Brian J. Smith, Jon Jon Briones, Brooke Smith, Jake McDorman, and Rosalind Eleazar.

This movie has been a long time in the making. Bragi F. Schut wrote the first screenplay for The Last Voyage Of The Demeter in 2002, and the project has been on a cursed ride through development hell ever since. Directors like David Slade and Neil Marshall, and actors like Noomi Rapace and Ben Kingsley have been attached throughout its 20-year sailing, and it’s finally come into port under the captaining of Trollhunter director André Øvredal, who has a keen eye for outstanding visuals that blend practical and virtual effects. That’s clear here in the trailer, where it’s all too easy to feel like you’re on board the damned ship, rocking and fearing for your life.

The story is an expansion of the “Captain’s Log” chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, wherein a crew is chartered to bring mystery cargo from Carpathia to London. Bad news about what’s inside one of the boxes.

It’s a sequence Dracula fans will know well that was brought to especially potent life in the 2020 British series Dracula, but it’s an intriguing idea to stretch the events further and focus so much on the people aboard as they face an unstoppable evil.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (spoiler right there in the title!) stars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian. It hits theaters August 11th.

For fantasy fans, it truly is the best of times, and the worst of times. On the bright side—there’s more magic wielding, dragon riding, caped crusading content than ever before. Yay to that.

On the other hand, have you noticed that with all these shows, something feels … off?

No, that’s not just adulthood stripping you of childlike wonder. There is a subtle, yet undeniable decline in how these shows are being made, and your eyes are picking up on it. Nolan Yost, a freelance wigmaker living in New York City, explains the shift in his now viral Facebook post.

The post, which has been shared nearly 3,500 times, attributes shows being “mid,” (aka mediocre, or my favorite—meh) mostly to the new streaming-based studio system, which quite literally prioritizes quantity over quality, pumping out new content as fast as possible to snag a huge fan base.

The result? A “Shein era of mass media,” Yost says, adding that “the toll it takes on costuming and hair/makeup has made almost every new release from Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu have a B-movie visual quality.”

He even had some pictures to prove it.

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Yost first addressed the Amazon Prime Series “The Rings of Power.” One of the many, many things that makes Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy so iconic is the costumes. But that legacy was the direct result of dedication to detail.

“The production spent years hand-making every single piece of armor with real metal, hand-dyeing all-natural fiber fabrics, and designing distinct embroidery and hairstyles specific to each race in Middle Earth that had continuity through the story,” Yost wrote.

He added, “the natural dyes and dedicated layers of fabrics for elves, for hobbits, wool/dyes, and for men had a much more muted/medieval look, yet ethereal because of the slight detail you don’t really notice, but the depth draws your eye to every inch of the costume regardless.” This, he says, is why those three movies stand the test of time.

Compare this to the two images from “The Rings of Power,” below. In one photo “they barely scrapped together an unnaturally gilded scale mail breastplate and just screen printed a stretched long sleeve shirt to match underneath, all over a skirt in a single layer of a warped poly skirt.”

The other image shows “they just saved money on an Elven wig altogether for a 2022 pompadour, with a velvet pleated priest smock (with crushed parts not even steamed out), and a neckline that isn’t tailored to fit like we’ve seen previously with Elrond or Celeborn.”

Yost then moved onto HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” Arguably even those who have never seen a single episode of its predecessor, “Game of Thrones,” would still recognize Daenerys Targaryen for her platinum white hair—an attribute that Yost notes was quite expensive.

He explained that for the show’s final season alone, Daenerys’ wigs most likely cost tens of thousands, requiring human hair to be custom made into multiple wigs.

Luckily, there was only one character with that signature look in the show. For “House of the Dragon,” however, with a cast almost entirely made up of silver-haired brooding powerhouses, Yost surmises that due to budget constraints, the creators opted for synthetic wigs.

You can see below the problem this cost-cutting decision makes in terms of authenticity.

“Synthetic hair reflects light throughout the whole hair shaft and it tangles extremely easily,” Yost writes. “With any shot where a character isn’t actively moving or is performing dialogue and the hair isn’t being actively smoothed down every couple of seconds between shots, each flyaway is going to show up on camera if there’s any indirect lighting and look messy. Not only that, synthetic hair is also twice as thick per strand than human hair, so regardless of that the wigs are going to look bulky in an uncanny valley sort of way.”

This affects not just sci-fi and fantasy, but other genres meant to transport viewers into other worlds, like period pieces, which Yost points out with a picture from “Bridgerton” by Shonda Rhimes.

“It’s obviously not meant to be historically accurate, which is totally fine,” he writes, but without important details or embellishments or even proper undergarments to make the clothes fit well, everything looks like a slightly more expensive Halloween costume.

Yost’s insightful post really shines a light on what audiences are having to trade off for the sake of constant output. The phrase “done is better than perfect” takes on a new meaning altogether as studios race to meet a deadline with whatever is easiest to mass produce. But if viewers are so easily taken out of these stories because of noticeable corner cutting, then perhaps it’s a sign that what we really want and need are stories worth waiting for, ones that truly pull us in and leave us captivated. This is no easy ask, for studio execs or customers alike (I too am a voracious binge-watcher), but as we can see in these examples, the most valuable experiences rarely, if ever, come from rushing.

This article originally appeared on 9.10.22

Jessie Ware has dropped the third single from her forthcoming new album, with “Begin Again.” The dreamy, disco-influenced song was inspired both by Ware’s recent work and her time in Brazil. It was also one of the first things written for her record.

“‘Begin Again’ is where this album started,” she shared, according to Line Of Best Fit. “On a miserable afternoon during lockdown, James Ford zoomed Shungudzo and Danny Parker in Los Angeles. They were just waking up, it was already dark in London. Frustrated yet completely focused, we set about writing in a new – and unnatural – way over the internet.”

“Dreaming of human touch, escapes to Brazil, beach bodies, holiday romances, all of it!” she added. “I absolutely adore this song and I’m so excited for you to hear it, to hear the beautiful production by James and horns by Kokoroko, it’s the song that I knew I wanted to make as soon as I finished ‘Remember Where You Are.’”

The music video for Ware’s latest song was directed by Charlie Di Placido. It finds her and various background dancers just having a great time to keep with the carefree energy. Oh, and there’s also some fun costume changes throughout.

Listen to “Begin Again” above.

That! Feels Good! is out 4/28 via EMI. Find more information here.

Actor and rapper Jaden Smith is partnering with Samsung for a good cause. For the third iteration of their sustainable collection initiative, Samsung and Jaden have teamed up for a collection of limited-edition mobile accessories collection to celebrate Earth Day.

In Jaden and Samsung’s collection are an array of environmentally conscious cases for the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Galaxy Z Flip4, and Galaxy Buds2 Pro. The collection also features eco-friendly watch bands for Galaxy Watch5.

The Samsung Galaxy x MSFTSrep Eco-conscious Accessories Collection comes as part of Jaden’s MSFTSrep fashion and art brand. The designs draw inspiration from the interconnections of humankind, and the accessories are made with renewable resources and ethically sourced material.

According to Jaden, the arrival of the new accessories could not be more timely, as more consumers are becoming more conscious of their habits and their purchases.

“I think the public shift towards sustainability is amazing because people are waking up and realizing what we actually have to do to change the world,” said Jaden in a statement. “We have to change the way that we produce and the way that we consume, and everyone is waking up.”

Fans can purchase these stylish and eco-friendly new accessories here.