Released May 9, 2000 Recorded 2000 Length 4:26 | Format CD single Genre Heavy metal Label Warner Bros./Hollywood | |
"I Disappear" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. The song was recorded as a contribution to the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack and reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks for seven (non-consecutive) weeks in summer 2000. It does not appear on any of Metallica's studio albums, making it the band's only standalone single. The song, which won a 2000 Metal Edge Readers' Choice Award for "Song of the Year From a Movie Soundtrack," is the last Metallica studio recording to feature bassist Jason Newsted.
Contents
The discovery of an unfinished version of the song in early 2000 on the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster helped bring the illegal sharing of mp3 files to the spotlight, leading to the lawsuits that eventually brought down the original incarnation of Napster.
Track listing
Two versions of the single were released, one with the song only, and a second featuring a second, instrumental version of the song. They bear different catalog numbers.
With instrumental
Written and composed by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.
Song only
Written and composed by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.
Music video
The music video to the song, directed by Wayne Isham, features the members from Metallica in scenes that reference other movies. Kirk Hammett is in a desert being chased by a plane in a reference to North by Northwest. Jason Newsted is in a mansion struggling against hundreds of people that walk by him, similar to a scene in Brazil. James Hetfield is driving a car down a San Francisco hill, in a chase sequence resembling Bullitt. Lars Ulrich jumps off of an exploding building, similar to the film Die Hard. In between these scenes, the band plays together at the top of a tall rock in Monument Valley, Utah. In between these scenes, scenes featuring Tom Cruise climbing on the rock, taken from the film Mission: Impossible II are intercut. At the end of the video, Cruise reaches the top only for the band to have vanished. The car driven by Hetfield in the video is a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro; upon the video's completion, the Camaro was gifted to Hetfield. On September 22, 2003, Hetfield listed the Camaro on the auction website eBay, which later sold for more than $70,000 to charity.
It was the last video by the band to feature Newsted.