TOP 5
01
One
“One” is a song from the ...And Justice for All album. Bram Teitelman, a music critic, commented that “A big reason for the song’s popularity was its video, the first the band ever made. Adding footage from the 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun with shots of the band performing. The song (and video) is about a war veteran waking up in a hospital and realizing he’s a quadriplegic.” This song is put in the number one spot because of its storytelling, chord progression, and quality of the clean and distorted mix. For the first four minutes and 25 seconds, we are given a clean guitar playing a progression in D major which is accompanied by lyrics about the thoughts of a wounded soldier blown up by a landmine. This song is able to capture each individual essence of the band perfectly. “One” is able to show off their transitions between riffs with an impressive shift and mood change. The song was even able to land them their first huge television appearance on MTV which played their music video.
This song is able to capture every single essence of Metallica and that’s why it reached the number one spot. As many Metallica songs follow, the timbre of the song shows aggression and dark undertones, but at the same time is soft and almost innocent. An example of the dark undertones is when James Hetfield sings,
I can't remember anything
Can't tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel to scream
This terrible silence stops me
The rhythm of the song varies similarly to the timbre with the fact that it plays in the range of many different sounds of Metallica. Starting at the eighteen-second mark of the song, we are listening to the instruments with space between the notes and a slower rhythm. Once the song hits the three-minute and fifty-second mark, it becomes fast, complex, and more aggressive. The drums pound and boom in the background filling in empty sound ranges as the guitars gallop with a tight picking pattern. Kirk Hammett's solos in the song, at five minutes and forty-five seconds, is a perfect example of complex rhythm as shown in many Metallica songs. It has finger tapping and many notes bunched together to make a catchy and melodic riff. Next, is the dynamics of the song which embodies how Metallica can differentiate their writing. This song is able to fluctuate in dynamics as the rhythm and timbre change. The dynamics don’t follow the traditional loud start and loud end. In fact, the song is a constant build-up from quiet to loud. Finally, there is a mixture of texture within the work. Soft texture and thick texture switch constantly as Hetfield begins to sing “hold my breath as I wish for death.” It is a constant switch before all four of these musical elements switch and the mix stays thick with distorted guitars and double bass drums.
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