Say no more.And as confusing a line as “ are we human, or are we dancer” may be to many listeners, therein lies the secret of deciphering the meaning of this song. That is to say that said line was inspired by a quote which, in its entirety, reads that we are “ raising a generation of dancers, afraid to take one step out of line”. I will leave you with a perfect example, with words taken from Metallica’s ‘Dirty Window’: “Projector, rejector, infector, injector, defector”. The ardent need to rhyme illuminates a lyricist who is utterly clueless as to how to compose, persistently relying on rhymes which result in lyrics that only resemble the frightened verse of primary school children. I would genuinely dread to see the first draft of those words. The song’s writing serves as one of the only instances in which Ulrich and Metallica’s producer, Bob Rock, felt that Hetfield could write better lyrics than he had initially offered. Whilst these words are probably some of Hetfield’s better efforts, they are starkly lacking in introspection, intelligence and anything remotely resembling poetry.įunnily enough, the lyrics found in ‘Enter Sandman’ are not the original words that Hetfield wrote. Even take Metallica’s beloved ‘ Enter Sandman‘ and the lyrics: “Exit life/Enter night/Take my hand/We’re off to never-never land”. In fact, Hetfield primarily relies on a well-trodden method of ‘rhyming one dark thing with another dark thing’.
Of course, Metallica’s tunes are not designed to be reincarnations of Joni Mitchell songs, but as far as I am aware, Hetfield believes himself to be some kind of metal-Shakespearian genius. Take, for instance, “Suck on the barrel, suck on the barrel, suck it until it’s gone dry”, “What don’t kill you, make you more strong”, or even the astonishingly bad, “My lifestyle determines my death style”. While metal is not necessarily the most introspective of genres – with a large emphasis on the energy – Hetfield has inadvertently penned some of the worst lyrics of all time.
The fact remains that Hetfield is an astonishingly lousy lyricist. Creations that listeners could find kinship with and treasure, which, coincidentally, brings me to my main point. If only Hetfield had just an inkling of self-reflective capabilities, then he may have been able to churn out lyrics that actually meant something. That, and the fact that the vast sums of money was constantly being transferred into Metallica’s bank accounts, inflated the failed tennis player’s head (Ulrich’s) so much that, by all logical accounts, it should have exploded into smithereens and done us all the favour of never hearing another arrogant word spew forth from his repulsive mouth.
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