Fade to Black
by Metallica
- 116
- BPM
- B minor
- Key
- 10A
- Camelot
- 26
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
While writing and recording Ride the Lightning, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield were, as Ulrich later put it, obsessed with death. Their gear truck had just been broken into, which cost Hetfield his favorite Marshall amplifier, and the band had been thrown out of their manager's house for breaking things and drinking his liquor cabinet dry. Hetfield wrote "Fade to Black" at a friend's house in New Jersey, feeling pretty depressed.
It was the band's first power ballad, and Hetfield said they knew it would freak people out. It starts with an acoustic guitar and grows heavier as it goes. Hetfield learned how frustrating acoustic guitar can be in the studio, where every squeak could be heard.
The lyrics address suicidal feelings, and the band took a lot of criticism, as though kids were killing themselves because of the song. They also received hundreds of letters from kids saying they related to it and felt better. It went out in 1984 as a promotional single on a phosphorescent green LP. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified it 2x Platinum.
Fade to Black runs at 116 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.07 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 517 ms. It is in B minor, Camelot 10A, which shares its notes with D major and mixes cleanly with E minor and F# minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.