Songoftheday 5/1/20 - The window burns to light the way back home, a light that warms no matter where they've gone...
from the album Load (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10
Today's song of the day comes from the speed metal band Metallica, who had a huge start to the 1990s with their best-selling album Metallica, which spun off three top-40 pop hits with "Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven", and "Nothing Else Matters". The group toured for three years after, during which frontman James Hetfield suffered major burns in a concert accident and was required to hire a fill-in guitarist. After a break, it would be nearly five years from the release of the self-titled set for Metallica to return with a new studio album, Load. The lead single from the set (or, the "Load" single if you will) was the dramatic "Until It Sleeps". Written by Hetfield with drummer bandmate Lars Ulrich, who both produced the track with Bob Rock, the song carries the mysterious dark nightmarish themes that "Enter Sandman" did, though this times fans and radio were ready. The music video, directed by Samuel Bayer, the man who did Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", seems more in common with Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" clip with its vivid and disturbing imagery. All in all it made for Metallica's highest-charting pop hit to date...
"Until It Sleeps" became Metallica's first and so far only top ten pop hit in June of 1996. The song spent an impressive two months (eight weeks) at #1 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock chart, and even crossed over to Alternative Rock radio, where it rose to #27 as their first hit on that format. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Australia (one week), Denmark (two weeks), Finland (four weeks), Hungary (one week), and Sweden (two weeks). It also reached the top ten in Norway (#2), Ireland (#3), the Czech Republic (#3), Iceland (#4), Canada (#5), the Netherlands (#5), Italy (#7), Belgium (#8F/#16W), and France (#10), while hitting the top-20 in New Zealand (#11), Austria (#12), Germany (#15), and Spain (#16).
While that single was lingering on pop and rock radio, the album track "Ain't My Bitch" also got some rock station love, climbing to #15 on the Mainstream Rock list in the summer of 1996. The second commercial single released from the record, "Hero Of The Day", topped the rock list for three weeks, and made it to #60 on the pop Hot 100. It also went top 10 in Australia (#2), Finland (#3), Denmark (#7), Norway (#8), Hungary (#9), and Sweden (#10), while hitting #17 in both Canada and the UK. The country-metal excursion "Mama Said", like "Until It Sleeps" written about Hetfield's mom's battle with cancer, was an international hit, reaching the top-40 in Finland (#4), Norway (#13), the UK (#19), Ireland (#19), Australia (#24), and Sweden (#24), but wasn't promoted in America and Canada. Here in the West, that would be "King Nothing", which went to #6 on the Mainstream Rock chart and slipped on to the pop Hot 100 at #90 and onto the Canadian singles chart at #67. Finally, album cut "Bleeding Me" climbed to #6 on Mainstream Rock radio. The Load album would top the American and British sales charts, and resulted in so much recorded material that the band would release some of the leftovers into a new album Reload later in 1997.
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Here's the band performing live at the MTV Music Awards in 1996, where it won a moon man for Best Hard Rock video...
Next up, in concerts in Texas on their Cunning Stunts tour...
And finally, paired up with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for their S&M live album...
Up tomorrow: A two-for-one by young upcoming mononymed soul singer about the size of her romance.
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