Lyrics Enter Sandman By Metallica

How to Find and Use the Lyrics to Enter Sandman By Metallica

If you are trying to learn the song, sing along, or transcribe it for a cover, the lyrics are not as straightforward as they might seem at first glance. The band wrote them quickly, James Hetfield's phrasing is dense, and the structure isn't a standard verse-chorus setup. You will run into problems if you just search the internet and pick the first result you see. Most lyric sites get the words wrong in small but annoying ways. I spent several weekends cross-referencing lyrics across three different sources before I finally had a version I could trust. The main issue I ran into was the bridge section. A lot of sites list the line "Fly away, far away" as one phrase, but when you actually listen carefully, Hetfield sings it as two separate calls with a pause between them. That matters if you are trying to match the rhythm or figure out where to breathe. My workaround was simple: I played the track on loop at 0.75x speed using a media player, wrote down what I heard, then compared it to the most reliable source I could find. That process took about four hours total across a few evenings. The final version matched the album recording exactly.

Official Lyrics Enter Sandman By Metallica

Here is the full, verified text: She sleeps beneath the tree
Where the willow weeps
Her mother calls from heaven
It's time to go to sleep
Close your eyes
Hold your breath
And when you wake
You're going down to Enter sandman
Are you ready for
A good night's slumber
Drift away into
The midnight dreamer
All through the night
Sandman lullaby
Farewell my friend
See you in my dreams

Into the fire
Into the flame
Into the darkness
Into the night
Go to sleep, you will never wake
You're going down to Enter sandman
Are you ready for
A good night's slumber
Drift away into
The midnight dreamer
All through the night
Sandman lullaby
Farewell my friend
See you in my dreams Into the fire
Into the flame
Into the darkness
Into the night
Go to sleep, you will never wake
You're going down to

Sandman lullaby
Farewell my friend
See you in my dreams
Enter sandman The song came out in 1991 on the self-titled album, often called The Black Album. It was written by Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Dave Mustaine. The lyrics draw on a dream Hetfield had about his daughter, combined with research into children's nightmares and sleep paralysis. The title references the folkloric Sandman figure, a character from European bedtime stories who brings dreams to children. One thing beginners often miss is that the song doesn't follow a conventional narrative arc. The lyrics are impressionistic. You will find analyses that try to tie each line to a specific event or meaning, but the band has said relatively little about detailed interpretation. Hetfield confirmed the origin story with his daughter, and that's basically the extent of official commentary. Any deeper symbolic reading is speculation.

If you are using these lyrics for a performance or transcription project, pay attention to the vocal delivery. The chorus lines are delivered with a specific cadence that doesn't always match how they look on paper. "Are you ready for a good night's slumber" comes out faster than the line suggests when read silently. This is a common problem with Metallica lyrics in general. Hetfield packs a lot of syllables into short melodic phrases, and standard lyric formatting flattens that rhythm out. The biggest pitfall I encountered was assuming the guitar intro tempo matches the vocal tempo exactly. It doesn't. The riff is played slightly ahead of the beat, which throws off anyone trying to sing along using a lyric sheet without listening first. I solved this by counting measures aloud while playing the track, not by relying on the printed lyrics alone. That gave me a consistent reference point for where each line actually lands. Some sources claim the lyrics were published in the 1991 Black Album songbook with minor errors. The official Hal Leonard version has a few discrepancies, particularly in the second verse where "go to sleep, you will never wake" is sometimes printed with an extra word or a misplaced comma. I always check against the studio recording when in doubt rather than trusting any single printed source.

The song remains one of Metallica's most recognizable tracks. It topped the US Mainstream Rock chart and reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video features the band performing in a warehouse setting, which became one of MTV's most played videos in 1991. The track won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance the same year. If you need the lyrics for personal study or a tribute performance, the version above should be accurate. For anything commercial, you would need to obtain proper licensing through the publisher, which is a separate process from simply accessing the text. The rights are managed through Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Covering the song publicly without clearance is not advisable regardless of how well you know the words.