When I graduated from 8th grade, the students were polled on what song we wanted to sing at our ceremony.
By an overwhelming margin, we all chose Metallica's "One."
The teachers had the final decision, and we ended up singing Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All," though in the end I don't know if she was the better role model.
Metallica's so-called "Black Album" came out at an important part of my life: when I thought I had teen angst, but really didn't. The idea of having angst appealed to me, the same way the idea of camping sounds great, but following through sucks.
One of the songs on that album was "Unforgiven," which I soon grew tired of, just because MTV and every radio station played it over and over again. Plus, as a little metalhead at the time, it was too slow for me.
Several years later, Metallica released a re-worked version, with different lyrics, called "Unforgiven II," on its album "ReLoad." I couldn't decide whether it was lazy or inspired.
Now, I think it was inspired:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Bn_kD6QN4
Here is "The Unforgiven": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYUMPKFYd6g
