Jason Newsted wrote the main riff of Metallica's "My Friend of Misery."
The song was originally intended to be an instrumental, continuing a pattern in which previous Metallica albums had included an instrumental track. During the Black Album sessions, however, it developed into a vocal song with lyrics and a full arrangement.
Newsted's songwriting role is notable because Metallica's material at the time was written mainly by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Several ideas came from other members, but Newsted's central riff gave "My Friend of Misery" its foundation and provided one of his most visible creative contributions to the album.
The track appears near the end of the original sequence, before "The Struggle Within." It is not one of the album's five commercial singles, which is why the songwriting detail is often less familiar than the better-known credits for "Enter Sandman" or "Nothing Else Matters."