When Skates Became an Instrument: The Viral Ice Dance That Made Metallica’s Ballad Feel Brand New
In early December 2020, a brother-and-sister ice dance team from Long Island quietly dropped a video that would end up feeling bigger than the entire sport for a moment. Oona and Gage Brown weren’t unveiling a program inside a packed arena with judges and flags and pomp—they were carving edges into an empty rink at Bryant Park’s Winter Village in New York City, in the kind of early-morning cold that makes your lungs sting. The premise sounded almost absurd on paper: a lyrical, elegant ice dance set to Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” But the second the music began, the contrast stopped feeling like a gimmick and started feeling like the point.
The setting mattered as much as the skating. The pandemic had shut down most of the usual junior circuit, and winter 2020 was full of canceled competitions, quiet training sessions, and athletes trying to stay sharp without the adrenaline of real events. Instead of waiting for the world to reopen, the Browns took their work straight to the public, and they did it in the most cinematic way possible—captured by On Ice Perspectives, the skating film project known for making programs look like short films rather than handheld fan clips. What could have been “just a cool skate video” became the kind of polished, immersive performance you could watch on repeat even if you’ve never cared about twizzles in your life.
The timing of the shoot gave it extra mythology. According to reporting about the video’s production, it was filmed at 6:45 in the morning over the Thanksgiving holiday, which instantly explains the eerie calm of the rink and the almost secret-feeling intimacy of the whole thing. That hour makes every movement feel more personal: the blades cutting the ice, the breath, the way the choreography seems to live inside the emptiness around them. You don’t see crowds; you see commitment. You don’t feel “sports presentation”; you feel the rawness of practice turning into art.
Then there’s the music choice, which is why the video travels so far beyond skating circles. “Nothing Else Matters” is one of Metallica’s most emotionally direct songs—an arena ballad that can feel delicate and crushing in the same breath. The Browns didn’t skate over it like background audio; they treated it like a scene partner. Their timing leans into the song’s slow burn, letting the quiet moments linger and using the bigger swells for lifts and speed that feel earned. It’s the opposite of flashy “look what we can do” skating. It’s “watch what this song does to us while we move.”
Part of what made viewers hit replay was the sound design you could feel even through a screen. Because the video was filmed in a real outdoor rink environment, the skates become an extra instrument. That crisp scrape on a deep edge, the quick shush of a step sequence, the silence between phrases—those details amplify the intensity of the music instead of fighting it. It’s also why so many non-skaters responded so strongly: the sensory layer makes it feel physical. You can almost feel the cold and the speed. It turns the routine into something you watch with your whole body, not just your eyes.
The piece also wasn’t simply the Metallica studio version on loop. Several writeups at the time noted that the cut blends the original with cover vocals, including a version by Australian singer Marlisa, creating a cinematic, emotional arc rather than a straight-through track. That matters in skating because music edits can either flatten emotion or build it. This one builds. It gives the Browns room to start intimate, grow more dramatic, and then land somewhere that feels both triumphant and tender—exactly the emotional lane “Nothing Else Matters” lives in.
And then the internet did what it does when it finds something that feels oddly perfect: it shared it like wildfire. Within the skating world, it became immediate “must watch” material. Outside the skating world, it spread even faster because it was easy to describe and instantly clickable: “Figure skating to Metallica.” Metal fans who would normally scroll past a skating clip stopped because the song was theirs. Skating fans stopped because the filming was gorgeous. Casual viewers stopped because the pairing was unexpected but emotionally legible. When something hits all three groups at once, it doesn’t just go viral—it becomes a crossover moment.
The numbers tell the story, but the comments tell you why the numbers grew. The video surpassed one million views quickly, and over time it kept climbing until it reached tens of millions—at the time of writing, the YouTube upload on On Ice Perspectives sits in the neighborhood of 31 million views. That’s not normal reach for an ice dance free dance, and it’s not normal longevity for a one-off performance clip. It suggests that people weren’t just watching it once because it was trending; they were returning to it because it delivered the same emotional punch every time.
It also helped that the Browns weren’t anonymous talents. They were already a serious U.S. ice dance team—siblings paired in ice dance, climbing through the levels and building a reputation for maturity beyond their years. U.S. Figure Skating itself leaned into the moment, telling their story as they headed into the 2021 U.S. Championships and spotlighting how the “Nothing Else Matters” program became part of their identity at exactly the right time. When a federation starts framing your program as a narrative hook, you know the performance has escaped the usual bubble.
From a choreography standpoint, the routine is a masterclass in not over-choreographing emotion. It’s tempting, with a song this huge, to do “big” the whole time—big arms, big drama, big posing. The Browns and their team chose something smarter: precision that reads as feeling. The emotion comes from how clean the edges are, how close the timing is, how the holds change at exactly the right moments. That’s why it works on repeat. It doesn’t rely on surprise. It relies on craft, and craft doesn’t fade after the first watch.
There’s also a broader cultural reason this went nuclear: it arrived at a moment when people were starving for beauty that didn’t feel fake. Late 2020 was heavy. People were locked inside. Sports felt distant. Live concerts were gone. Then suddenly, here’s a video that feels like a little movie—cold air, quiet city energy, an iconic song, and two skaters moving like they’re trying to say something. That kind of content doesn’t just entertain. It comforts. It reminds you that humans still make things with care, even when the world is messy.
The metal world embraced it faster than you’d expect. Outlets that normally live in distortion and drum fills ran with the story because it genuinely respected the music instead of using it as a novelty. Loudwire highlighted the Browns as Team USA ice dancers and framed the clip as a surprisingly graceful, visually striking pairing with Metallica’s ballad—exactly the kind of “you have to see this” crossover that music sites love when it’s actually good. That coverage mattered because it widened the audience beyond skating algorithms and into rock and metal communities that rarely get fed skating content.
Then the routine started doing what viral moments do when they’re real: it followed them. The Browns weren’t able to leave “Nothing Else Matters” behind as just a clip; it became part of their public identity. Performances at competitions, gala appearances, and later uploads kept pulling new viewers back to the original. The program effectively became their handshake with the internet. And because it wasn’t a gimmick, that identity helped rather than harmed. It said: these two aren’t just technicians—they’re storytellers who can translate big music into movement without turning it into cheese.
There’s a hidden ingredient here, too: sibling chemistry. In ice dance, partnership is everything, and sibling teams can sometimes feel either too stiff or too “safe.” The Browns managed to feel connected without leaning into romance tropes that don’t fit them. Their connection reads as trust, timing, and shared instincts—two people who grew up in the same rhythm. That kind of relationship shows up in tiny moments: the way a hand connects without searching, the way a rotation catches perfectly, the way they recover micro-wobbles without panic. Viewers might not name it, but they feel it.
By the time people started calling it “one of the most watched ice dance videos ever,” it wasn’t hyperbole—it was math. Social posts citing “over 28 million” views became common as the clip kept climbing, and the YouTube view count eventually pushed beyond that into the 30-million range. That’s the difference between “viral” and “classic.” Viral is a spike. Classic is a spike that refuses to die because the content keeps earning attention long after the trend cycle moves on.
What makes this performance special, ultimately, is that it flips the usual hierarchy. In most sports clips, you need context to care: the stakes, the medals, the rankings. Here, you don’t. You can be a Metallica fan, a skating fan, or someone who knows nothing about either and still get pulled in. The piece works as a standalone emotional story: quiet becomes intensity, intensity becomes release, release becomes stillness. The skating doesn’t ask you to understand; it invites you to feel.
And maybe that’s why people keep describing it like a “moment” rather than a “routine.” It’s not just impressive. It’s transporting. It’s the rare performance that makes a sport feel like cinema without losing athletic integrity, and makes a rock ballad feel like a physical landscape you can move through. Oona and Gage Brown didn’t just skate to “Nothing Else Matters.” They translated it into motion—and in doing so, they created a clip that continues to bring new audiences into skating, one replay at a time.
