Metallica’s Black Album is so fucking popular you’d think every copy purchased included a free ounce of weed and a guaranteed orgasm for the listener. Despite being nearly thirty years old (OH GAWD MY YOUTH IS GONE), still sells 5,000 copies a week, and was the first release of the Nielsen SoundScan era to sell sixteen million copies (that number has since climbed, and is now closer to seventeen million, BTW).

Who the hell just bought this album last week? I have no idea, but they helped the band claim yet ANOTHER new chart record, according to Forbes: it is now one of only four albums in the history of the Billboard 200 to chart for 550 nonconsecutive weeks. That’s just over ten-and-a-half years! The other three albums, FYI, are Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Legend, and Journey’s Journey’s Greatest Hits. And if you take into consideration that the latter two of those releases are greatest hits collections, then the Black Album becomes the second-longest-charting record in history, after Dark Side.

I gotta say, even back in the days when MTV and radio were playing “Enter Sandman,” “Unforgiven,” and “Wherever I May Roam” around the clock, I never would have dreamed that this album would still be such a hit all these years later. I mean… does the Black Album now include a free ounce of weed and a guaranteed orgasm for the listener? Was there a special reissue I missed somehow? You guys wouldn’t keep that from me, would you?