Metallica – Enter Sandman
About The Song
“Enter Sandman” is the first track and lead single from Metallica’s self-titled album, which is known as The Black Album. Their fifth album, it’s a metal landmark and far and away their most popular, selling a stunning 16 million copies in America and many more worldwide. Led Zeppelin and AC/DC had huge sellers in the ’70s and ’80s, but in the hard rock milieu, the The Black Album is by far the biggest seller released after 1990.
Written by band members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett, “Enter Sandman” is about nightmares and things that go “bump” in the night. It has by far the most radio play of all of Metallica’s songs.
James Hetfield’s original lyric was about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Crib Death), when a baby dies inexplicably in its crib. The line, “Off to never never land” was, “Disrupt the perfect family,” and the “sandman” kills the baby.
Pretty gruesome stuff, so their producer Bob Rock convinced him to change it to make it more accessible and meaningful. The band had a policy of not commenting on each other’s individual contributions, but Rock was an outsider and felt free to speak up. To his surprise, Hetfield took it well and altered the lyric accordingly.
Speaking with Uncut in 2007, Hetfield said: “I wanted more of the mental thing where this kid gets manipulated by what adults say. And you know when you wake up with that s–t in your eye? That’s supposedly been put in there by the sandman to make you dream. So the guy in the song tells this little kid that and he kinda freaks. He can’t sleep after that and it works the opposite way. Instead of a soothing thing, the table’s turned.”
