There will never be another band like Metallica. This is in part due to the horsemen’s undeniable songwriting ability, and in part because they were an awesome emerging act during the height of the music industry’s bloated excess, when a band could still become shrouded in publicists and rumor overnight (and before the Internet allowed us to see hi-res images of everyone’s butthole). As such, Metallica have accomplished things no other band may ever do again — say, for example, hitting #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock charts in four different decades.
According to Billboard, Metallica have now officially become the first band to top the Mainstream Rock charts in four separate decades. The news comes with the band’s newest single, “All Within My Hands” from this year’s S&M2, topping the charts this week. Now, Metallica have conquered the Mainstream Rock Top 10 in the ’90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.
What’s worth noting and especially impressive to longtime Metallica fans is that of all the songs featured on S&M2, it was one from the band’s ill-fated 2003 album St. Anger that was released as a single, and which topped the charts. When it came out, St. Anger was across the board reviled, and used as an example of how far from the path Metallica had strayed; now, it seems, the songs thereon are getting a second life among fans.
Here are Metallica’s Mainstream Rock Chart-topping singles across the last four decades.
- Until It Sleeps (June 8, 1996)
- Hero Of The Day (December 7, 1996)
- Turn The Page (November 28, 1998)
- No Leaf Clover (January 22, 2000)
- I Disappear (June 10, 2000)
- The Day That Never Comes (September 20, 2008)
- Cyanide (April 4, 2009)
- Hardwired (October 8, 2016)
- Atlas, Rise! (February 18, 2017)
- All Within My Hands (September 5, 2020)
Metallica’s S&M2 is out now via Blackened Recordings. Here’s “All Within My Hands” as performed by the band alongside the San Francisco Symphony at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California.
