Jason Newsted originally intended “My Friend of Misery” to be an instrumental.
Newsted wrote the song’s main bass-riff idea during the development of Metallica. He had hoped it would become the band’s next instrumental, following earlier instrumentals such as “Anesthesia—Pulling Teeth,” “The Call of Ktulu,” “Orion,” and “To Live Is to Die.”
The finished track eventually received lyrics and vocals, with songwriting credits shared by Newsted, James Hetfield, and Lars Ulrich. It appears as the eleventh song on the standard album sequence and remains one of the record’s more atmospheric compositions.
This fact is often mixed up with Newsted’s limited songwriting credit on ...And Justice for All. On that earlier album, “Blackened” was his only songwriting credit, whereas “My Friend of Misery” gave him a more prominent compositional contribution.