Enter Sandman

"Enter Sandman" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It is the opening track and lead single from their self-titled fifth album, released in 1991. The music was written by Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Vocalist and rhythm guitarist Hetfield wrote the lyrics, which deal with the concept of a child's nightmares.

The single reached number 16 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and achieved platinum certification for more than 1,000,000 copies shipped in the United States, spurring sales of over 30 million copies for ''Metallica'' and propelling Metallica to worldwide popularity. Acclaimed by critics, the song is featured in all of Metallica's live albums and DVDs released after 1991 and has been played live at award ceremonies and benefit concerts.

Writing and recording

"Enter Sandman" was the first song Metallica had written for their 1991 eponymous album. Metallica's songwriting at that time was done mainly by rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, after they gathered tapes of song ideas and concepts from the other members of the band, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Jason Newsted. Ulrich's house in Berkeley, California, was used for this purpose. "Enter Sandman" evolved from a guitar riff that Hammett wrote, after being "inspired" by Soundgarden's 1989 album ''Louder Than Love''. Originally, the riff was two bars in length, but Ulrich suggested the first bar be played three times and the second bar only be repeated every fourth time. The instrumental parts of the song were quickly finished, but Hetfield did not come up with vocal melodies and lyrics for a long time. The song was among the album's last to have lyrics, and the lyrics featured in the song are not the original; Hetfield felt that "Enter Sandman" sounded "catchy and kind of commercial" and so to counterbalance the sound, he wrote lyrics about "destroy ngthe perfect family; a huge horrible secret in a family" that included references to crib death. For the first time in Metallica's history, however, Ulrich and producer Bob Rock told Hetfield that they felt he could write better lyrics. Nevertheless, according to Ulrich, the song was the "foundation, the guide to the whole record" even before it had lyrics.

An instrumental demo was recorded on August 13, 1990. The album ''Metallica'' was mostly recorded in Los Angeles at One on One Studios, between October 6, 1990, and June 16, 1991, although Ulrich, Hetfield, and Rock also recorded for a week in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, between April and May 1991. As the first to be produced by Bob Rock, it was recorded differently from previous Metallica albums; Rock suggested that the band members record in the studio while playing together, rather than separately.

"Enter Sandman" had what Hetfield described as a "wall of guitars"— three rhythm guitar tracks of the same riff played by himself to create a "wall of sound". According to engineer Randy Staub, close to 50 takes of the drums were recorded because Ulrich did not record the song in its entirety, but rather recorded each section of the song separately. Because it was difficult to get in one take the "intensity" that the band wanted, numerous takes were selected and edited together. Staub mentioned that the production team spent much time getting the best sound from each part of the room and used several combinations of 40 to 50 microphones in recording the drums and guitars to simulate the sound of a live concert. The bass guitar sound also gained importance with Rock; as Newsted states, Metallica's sound was previously "very guitar-oriented" and that "when he ockcame into the picture, bass frequencies also came into the picture." As the first single, "Enter Sandman" was also the first song to be mixed, a task that took roughly ten days because the band and Bob Rock had to create the sound for the entire album while mixing the song.

Composition

The simpler songs in the album ''Metallica'', including "Enter Sandman", are a departure from the band's previous, more musically complex album '' ...And Justice for All''. Ulrich described "Enter Sandman" as a "one-riff song", in which all of its sections derive from the main riff credited to Kirk Hammett. Writers have categorized the song as heavy metal and hard rock.

"Enter Sandman" moves at a tempo of 123 beats per minute for the song length of 5:32 which is slightly above the average song length of the album. It begins with an acoustic guitar intro similar to the main riff; an E minor chord on a guitar using the wah-wah pedal is then introduced, followed by heavy use of tom-tom drums. Distorted guitars then build up to the main riff, which starts 56 seconds into the song and utilizes variations of the E/ B tritone. P. J. Howorth, in ''The Wah Wah Book'', characterized the main riff as "sinister". The song then follows a common structure, playing two iterations of a verse, a pre-chorus, and a chorus. On the chorus and pre-chorus, the song modulates one whole tone, up to F, and after the second chorus, Hammett plays a guitar solo with the main, pre-chorus, and chorus riffs in the background. Hammett makes use of the wah-wah pedal and a wide range of scales, including E minor pentatonic, B minor, F minor, E minor, and the E dorian mode. One of the final licks of the solo was inspired by the Heart song "Magic Man" as used in Ice-T's "Personal". Just a few seconds before the solo ends, the breakdown starts, in which the clean drum intro starts, then the acoustic guitar intro when the last notes of Kirk's solo echo over it into the background, are heard together with Hetfield teaching a child the " Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" bedtime prayer and reciting a variation of the lullaby rhyme "Hush Little Baby" where he is heard saying "Hush little baby don't say a word, and never mind that noise you heard. It's just the beasts under your bed, in your closet, in your head". After building again to a chorus, the song starts to fade out while the band plays the same riffs as the buildup intro in reverse order. Lyrically, the song is about "nightmares and all that come with them", according to Chris True of AllMusic. The title is a reference to the sandman, a character from Western folklore who makes children sleep.

Release and reception

Initially, the song "Holier Than Thou" was slated to be the opening track and first single from ''Metallica''; according to the documentary '' A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica'', producer Bob Rock told Ulrich and Hetfield that the album has "five or six songs that are going to be classics", not only with fans but also on the radio, and that "the first song that should come out is 'Holier Than Thou. According to Rock, Ulrich was the only band member who felt, even before recording, that "Enter Sandman" was the ideal song to be the first single. Ulrich has said that there was a "big argument"; however, after explaining his point of view to the rest of the band, "Enter Sandman" eventually became the opening track and first single of the album.

The single was released on July 29, 1991, two weeks before the release of ''Metallica''. The album debuted at No. 1 on the ''Billboard'' 200 in the United States and nine other countries, and sold over 22 million copies worldwide, allowing "Enter Sandman" to become, as Chris True describes it, "one of the most recognizable songs of all time in rock". The single peaked at No. 16 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart and at No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. On September 30, 1991, it became Metallica's second single to achieve gold status in the United States, for shipping more than 500,000 copies. In August 2021, the song re-entered the German Singles Chart at No. 1 after a CD single was re-issued whose profit is set to be donated for charity benefitting the German survivors of the 2021 European floods. In addition to the nominations received by the album as a whole, the song was nominated for Best Rock Song at the 34th Grammy Awards in 1992, ultimately losing to "The Soul Cages" by Sting. It was also voted Song of the Year in ''Metal Edge''s 1991 Readers Choice Awards.

"Enter Sandman" was acclaimed by critics. Chris True of AllMusic declared it "one of Metallica's best moments" and a "burst of stadium level metal that, once away from the buildup intro, never lets up". According to him, the song's breakdown "brilliantly utilizes that 'Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep' bedtime prayer in such a way as to add to the scary movie aspect of the song". Steve Huey, in AllMusic's review of ''Metallica'', described it as one of the album's best songs, with "crushing, stripped-down grooves". Robert Palmer of ''Rolling Stone'' described "Enter Sandman" as "possibly the first metal lullaby" and wrote that the song "tell the tale" of the album's "detail and dynamic, ..song structures and impact of individual tracks". Sid Smith from the BBC
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