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Enter Sandman: 50 cover versions—watch them here!

Chris Well

“We’re off to never-never land…”

One of the biggest songs from heavy metal band Metallica, “Enter Sandman” explores the concept of a child’s nightmares. The opening track from Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album, the music was written by band members Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, and James Hetfield—with Hetfield writing the lyrics as well.

Regarding the song, Hetfield told Uncut, “I wanted more of the mental thing where this kid gets manipulated by what adults say. [The kid] can’t sleep after that…. Instead of a soothing thing, the table’s turned.”

This video playlist features more than 50 recording artists putting their own spin on the song. Some of them appeared on a tribute album, The Metallica Blacklist, with various artists covering tracks from Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album (often referred to as The Black Album), which is now celebrating 30 years.

This video playlist from the Monster Complex account on YouTube features artists bringing in several different musical styles to “Enter Sandman,” including ballads, jazz numbers, dance mixes, rockers, and more. The playlist includes Metallica playing the official version in the music video, plus the band on stage in Mexico, as well as Anthony Vincent (revising the song in TWENTY styles), Elise Trouw, Violet Orlandi, (showing up with TWO completely different versions), Lauren Babic, Halocene, Weezer (with a fun “oh, of course this is Weezer” moment), Ghost, Mozart Heroes (classical!), Robyn Adele Anderson (big band!), Jarren Benton (rap!), Iron Horse (bluegrass!), Scary Pockets (funkin’ it up), Pat Boone (seriously, not kidding), plus remixes, and a bunch more. There are even mashups that cross Metallica with Run-DMC, Huey Lewis & The News, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Go ahead and start watching the videos below…

Enter Sandman: 50 cover versions—watch them here!

Metallica’s Hammett talked with Guitar World about the history of the song—explaining that when he first sat down to write “Enter Sandman,” he wanted to make something as memorable as Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water.” The guitarist also shared how the song’s hammering riff was inspired by Soundgarden.

“It was something that literally came to me at three o’clock in the morning,” Hammett said. “I had been listening to the new Soundgarden album at that time [Louder Than Love] and, you know, this was when grunge was at its earliest stage—we’re talking late 1989 or so. No one was even calling it grunge yet. But I was loving a lot of it, and it was influencing me somewhat. And so I sat down and I said to myself, as I always do, ‘I want to write the next Smoke on the Water.’ And I just started messing around. I got the swing kind of feel going, and then I was thinking of Soundgarden and how they were using dropped tunings.”

With a goal to create “shorter, to-the-point” songs, the result was a straightforward hard rock song that helped drive album sales through the roof. And of course the simpler style certainly drew in lots of other artists who were compelled to cover the song…

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