I came in at THIS on the list!
2. Lars Ulrich
For a while, Metallica could do no wrong. And while they’d alienated some of the die-hards with 1991’s way more commercial The Black Album, they picked up way more, and remains the best-selling album of the SoundScan era, which also launched in 1991. It was really in 2000 when Lars got on everyone’s shit list. As file sharing started to spread, Ulrich became the voice of the out-of-touch artist that wanted to control everything. Metallica sued Napster, and Ulrich testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The fact that he appeared in Some Kind of Monster selling a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting for $5 million really didn’t help matters. Lars is pretty unapologetic about his lifestyle (which determines his deathstyle), however. But as long as the band keeps putting out music, he’ll have his defenders.
