Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ goes Viral Thanks to ‘Stranger Things’ Feature

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‘Stranger Things’ is a cultural phenomenon. It’s so big that the incorporation of any music in season 4 is causing the track(s) to explode around the world.

*Warning – spoilers ahead*

The trend started earlier this season with Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’, which was used prominently throughout part 1 of the season as it was a defense mechanism by Max against Season 4 villain, Vecna. The song, which was originally released in the 80’s, shot up the charts and has smashed streaming records around the world for the past few weeks since.

Now, it’s happening again with one of our own. Towards the end of the season, as you’ve probably seen or heard by now, there’s a pretty epic scene featuring Metallica’s classic, ‘Master of Puppets.‘ Watch below for the scene.

Extra cool fun fact is that this wasn’t just Netflix synching the old-school audio. Robert Trujillo’s own son, Tye, and Kirk both gave the track a little audio facelift in 2022 by adding in some additional guitar tracks.

Ever since the scene dropped, demand and consumption for Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ has skyrocketed.

A look at Spotify’s current top charts shows the track currently sitting prominently across all of their top consumption trackers.

For example, ‘Master of Puppets’ is currently the #12 track in the Top 50 most played songs in the USA right now, #30 for the most viral songs in the USA, and #26 for the Top most played songs globally.

To drive the impact home further, here is a global chart from Google that shows search consumption on the search engine for the past year for Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets.’

As you can see, searches for the song have gotten a whopping 5X spike over the past few days vs. its baseline of the year prior.

The same behavior is happening on YouTube right now as well, with global searches for ‘Master of Puppets’ also up by about 5X compared to the past year.

It probably also doesn’t hurt that the epic guitar scene featuring the music is the #13 top trending video on all of YouTube, globally, as of time of writing this article:

Pretty epic. Here’s all the other ways that the show has been shining on heavy metal this season:

Here’s All the Secret Heavy Metal Easter Eggs in ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4

The Son of Metallica’s Robert Trujillo Contributed To The Stranger Things’ “Master of Puppets” Performance