My Sunday Song #61 is Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”.  I needed to crank things up a bit and this is great song to turn up to 10 and blast out some windows and shake some walls.  A good song to test out my new speakers on.  The song is off the 1991 album, Metallica (or The Black Album) and was the song that made Metallica mainstream and helped turn them into megastars.  The song was released two weeks before the album and helped the album debut at #1 and go on to sell well over 22 million copies.

If you are not familiar with this song, it just might be one of the most recognizable metal songs of all time and one of the scariest. The song is about children’s nightmares and what might be lying under your bed.  I think what helps give it that eerie feeling is the child’s prayer that is in the song:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord, my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

Having a child say that prayer in the song just adds to the creepiness.  Of course, the sonic blast of that guitar riff throughout helps with the dark theme of the song. I also love the line in the song, “Take my hand, we’re off to never, never land”.  This now makes Peter Pan’s world a little more sinister and creepy.  Now, I don’t want to go there.

The original concept of the song was about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), however, Bob Rock (the producer extraordinaire) thought it was a little too dark and had them change it up a little.  Damn, that must have been really dark stuff because it is still dark and this is the lighter version…DAMN is right!

I had never really listened to Metallica up until this song.  Now today, my kids even know this song and when we hear it on the radio, I actually don’t have to change the channel as they want to hear it as well.  I hope you give the song a listen, if you don’t know it.  And if you do, crank it up and enjoy it again.

Blow out those speakers and sleep tight tonight!!!  Enjoy and Happy Sunday!!!

“Enter Sandman”