Wherever They May Roam: Metallica Set Guinness World Record for Touring
Over the past three decades, Metallica have played up their road-dog status by giving their treks names like “Poor Touring Me” and the “Nowhere Else to Roam Tour,” but it appears someone has been keeping track of their cartography. Guinness World Records recently awarded the group with a plaque for being the first and only band to tour all seven continents, an achievement they ticked off last year when they played a gig in Antarctica, in addition to ones in the world’s more populated land masses. The group will also be honored in the 60th anniversary edition of Guinness World Records 2015, which comes out September 10th.
“Seven continents in one year with Antarctica being the gig of a lifetime….” James Hetfield said in a statement. “Yes, 120 scientists and competition winners. Not to mention the 300 very curious penguins!”
This year, Metallica played gigs in both North and South America and Europe and currently have no tour dates planned for the rest of the year. Instead, they’re focusing on writing the follow-up to their 2008 record Death Magnetic. They previewed the upcoming record on their tour this year with a new song titled “Lords of Summer,” which they played throughout their multi-continental Metallica by Request tour. In April, Lars Ulrich estimated that the band was in the “fourth inning” of the making of their new album during an interview with Rolling Stone.
A number of other musicians also received Guinness World Records this year. One Direction earned the distinction of being the first act to debut at Number One with its first three albums. “This really is one of our proudest moments, both for us and our incredible fans,” Niall Horan said in a statement. “Whenever we talk about it, we always say how cool it is that we did it first, how sick is that?!”
Additionally, after a short few months of people being astounded by Miley Cyrus‘ twerking and superhuman inability to stay clothed, the pop singer became the “most searched-for pop star on the Internet” in 2013. Shakira ousted Rihanna as the “most ‘liked’ person on Facebook” and chalked up the merit of being the “first person to reach 100 million likes on Facebook.” Other Guinness-recognized musical achievements in this edition of the book include Katy Perry gaining the most Twitter followers, and Eminem managed to squeeze the most words into a hit single (1,560 in the motor-mouthed “Rap God”).
In the movies and TV realm, Guinness recognized Frozen for earning the “highest box office film gross for an animation” for its reported $1.13 billion dollars so far. And Game of Thrones is now officially the most pirated show after Torrent Freak reported that it had earned the distinction by being downloaded an supposed 5.9 million times a week last year. Also, Robert Downey, Jr. reached one million “followers” the fastest, Vin Diesel’s heartfelt picture and tribute to his Fast and Furious costar Paul Walker got the most “likes” for an item on Facebook, Project Runway became the “highest rated” reality competition series and Saturday Night Live earned the most primetime Emmys (40) of any TV show.