Michael Kamen added orchestration to Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” on The Black Album.
Kamen was credited for the orchestral arrangement, while the London Symphony Orchestra performed on the studio recording. The song’s orchestral color helped distinguish it from Metallica’s earlier, more aggressively arranged material and contributed to its broad appeal.
The track began as a private guitar idea by James Hetfield rather than a conventional band composition. Hetfield initially considered the unfinished song too personal to present, but Lars Ulrich heard potential in it and encouraged its development. The finished version became one of the album’s best-known songs.
Kamen later worked with Metallica again on S&M, the 1999 live album recorded with the San Francisco Symphony. That project is sometimes confused with the original Black Album recording: S&M features a later live orchestral performance, while Kamen’s original studio arrangement appears on “Nothing Else Matters” itself.