Metallica’s Master of Puppets is now the top song budding guitarists want to learn after its inclusion in Stranger Things, according to online guitar lesson platform Yousician.
The track – which features in the final episode of season four of Stranger Things, in which central character Eddie Munson plays it in an act of heroism – has also received a notable uptick on digital streaming platforms, with Spotify reporting it has been downloaded 17.5 million times in the past week alone.
Master of Puppets has also surged to #1 on the iTunes rock chart and reached #12 on Spotify’s Global Top 50 playlist.
As Yousician explains, “despite it being a challenging song to pick up”, the fever surrounding the 1986 thrash metal classic has inspired many new guitarists to try their hand at learning it.
It says that while Master of Puppets is not yet available on its GuitarTuna Play songbook platform, demand for the song from its users has risen by about 1700 per cent since July 1, when the final episode of Stranger Things season four debuted.
The track is, however, available to learn via Yousician’s recently launched collaboration with Metallica, which saw the platform recruit James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Rob Trujillo and Lars Ulrich for three guitar-focused courses on riffs, rhythm and lead. The courses also see the group teach users how to play a selection of ‘Tallica classics, including One, Nothing Else Matters and Battery.
“The way the Duffer Brothers have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include Master of Puppets in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it,” the band wrote in a recent Instagram post.
“We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did we were totally blown away. It’s so extremely well done, so much so, that some folks were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Joseph Quinn’s hands in the trailer – how crazy cool is that?”
While guitarist Aidan Fisher served as a body double for Quinn – who plays Eddie Munson – during the Master of Puppets-soundtracked sequence, Quinn is a rather adept guitar player himself.
In a recent rehearsal clip, the actor is seen wielding his Stranger Things B.C. Rich Warlock as he runs through the track’s opening riff.
“I was trying to be realistic with what I could do,” Quinn said in a recent interview with a Radio Times. “Like I've been playing [guitar] since I was a kid but I'm no virtuoso. So I had most of the song down, but for the solo, we had to fly someone, a black belt metal guitarist, in to help with that. The rest of it? I had a stab at it, yeah.”
