“One” is a song written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich ...



[pic]What were the lyrics to ‘One’ by Metallica written about?

By Jack

“One” is a song written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich and performed by their heavy metal band Metallica and appears on the album “…And Justice for all”. The song was one of Metallicas biggest hits, being their first top 40 single by reaching #35 on the billboard top 100. The song was inspired by Dalton Trumbo’s movie and novel “Johnny got his gun”. The movie was about a young soldier whose body was horrifically harmed after he was hit by a German shell during World War I. He lost his arms, legs, nose, and ears and could not speak or hear, yet his mind functions worked perfectly leaving him a prisoner in his own body, which is a condition known as ‘locked inside syndrome’.

The first verse begins with the two lines ‘I can't remember anything, Can't tell if this is true or dream’ which refers to his mind just awakening in the hospital, not remembering anything and he cannot tell whether it is just a dream or if it is reality. Then they say ‘Deep down inside I feel to scream, this terrible silence stops me’ which means that he wishes to scream out loud for help but fails as he cannot communicate to the outside world.

In the second verse they say ‘now that the war is through with me I'm waking up, I cannot see that there's not much left of me, nothing is real but pain now’ which means that the war has ruined him and now that he is beginning to wake up, he sees that he will be like that forever and the only thing that is real to him is the pain.

Then they sing the chorus ‘hold my breath as I wish for death, oh please God wake me’ which means that he carries on hoping to die because of the pain and for God to wake him up.

Then the third line commences with ‘back in the womb it's much too real, in pumps life that I must feel but can't look forward to reveal’ which symbolises that his life is starting over again he doesn’t look forward to it. The two lines are followed by ‘look to the time when I'll live’ which denotes him looking to the future when he’ll live.

In the fourth verse it begins with the two lines ‘fed through the tube that sticks in me just like a wartime novelty’ talks about how he is force fed (which is the tube that sticks in him) and that he is someone from the wartime and is completely different to the other people (novelty). The final two lines in the verse are ‘tied to machines that make me be, cut this life off from me’ refers to being on life support and the machines forcing him to live when he wants to end it (cut off).

They then break into the chorus but add the two lines ‘now the world is gone I'm just one’ meaning the world is gone from him, so he’s now in his own world and is all alone.

The singing for the fifth line starts getting more aggressive and has the lines ‘darkness imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself, body my holding cell’. The first and the last two lines symbolise his body as a prison. They then say that because he cannot communicate to the world and he can’t live but he still can’t die, therefore he can only see bad things.

The sixth verse (the final) has the same aggressive singing as the previous line. They say ‘landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul’ which means that the landmine which injured him in the first place, took away his sight, speech, hearing, arms, legs and soul. Then they sing the final line ‘and left me with life in hell’ which refers to his life being terrible and as if he was in hell.

‘One’ was written by Metallica. They were inspired to write the song after they thought what it would be like to be alive but to have no way of communicating to the outside world. They then saw the movie ‘Johnny got his gun’ and decided to write the song. It shows how horrible war really is.

I chose this song because it shows the horrendous effect war can have on peoples’ lives. I would truly

feel sorry for the person in this situation. This is one of my favourite songs of all time, Metallica are also one of my favourite bands.

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