Peace Sells
by Megadeth
- 138
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 33
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
The lyrics to "Peace Sells" were written on the wall of Megadeth's rehearsal space because Dave Mustaine had no pen or paper. The title came from a copy of Reader's Digest he had seen, which carried a story by Patti Smith with the words "Peace sells, but nobody's buying it". He said he wrote the song because he was tired of people mocking metal fans.
The bass intro came first, and quickly. David Ellefson had taken the frets off his BC Rich Eagle bass. When Mustaine saw it, he grabbed it and almost immediately wrote the intro. Later that day the two met drummer Gar Samuelson and guitarist Chris Poland. The song was fully shaped. The original version ran over eight minutes and was written in only a few hours. Samuelson suggested shortening it and making it a single.
It came out in November 1986, the band's second single. The video became an MTV mainstay, and the bass line was used as the intro to MTV News. Mustaine said Megadeth received no royalties for that use. When Samuelson died on July 14, 1999, Mustaine dedicated "Peace Sells" to him at Woodstock 99, eleven days later.
Peace Sells runs at 138 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.74 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 435 ms. It is in E minor, Camelot 9A, which shares its notes with G major and mixes cleanly with A minor and B minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.