The Best-Selling US Album Of The Past 35 Years Celebrates Its Anniversary Today

"Exit light / Enter night / Take my hand / We're off to never-never land." If you didn't start head-banging at reading those lyrics to "Enter Sandman," we can't be friends. Thankfully, we can at least be friends with the 20 million people who've purchased Metallica's 1991 self-titled album, commonly called "The Black Album," since it was released on August 12, 1991. To this day, the double-diamond record stands as the highest-selling album from a U.S. artist of the past 35 years.

No matter how many diehards still groan about how Metallica went all soft and were no longer thrash by the time "The Black Album" came out, the proof is in the sales figures and track names. Aside from "Enter Sandman," we can add "The Unforgiven," "Wherever I May Roam," "Sad But True," and "Nothing Else Matters" — which Sir Elton John himself says is one of the best songs ever written – all of which came from this album and breached the Billboard Hot 100. 

But even though sales figures tell a lot, there's no way to measure the incalculable impact of "The Black Album" on getting fans into heavier music. Folks who would have never touched metal with a hundred-foot pole, or even earlier work like 1986's thrashterpiece, "Master of Puppets" (recorded when Metallica was basically kids in their early 20s, we would add), glommed onto "The Black Album" because it was just that good — and it still is. Metallica passed the 20-million mark as recently as May, 2025, indicating that hope remains within popular music.

The 20-million album sales club isn't exactly huge. Of course, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (1982) tops most album sales lists; the RIAA places it at 34 million copies sold, and sharing the same rarified air are Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel, and Fleetwood Mac. And within the same time period, there's Shania Twain for 1997's "Come On Over," which has also sold 20 million copies. But Twain the country singer is Canadian, whereas Metallica was formed in San Francisco (never mind that Lars Ulrich is Danish), making Metallica grade-A, certified American musicians — the highest-selling ones of the past 35 years.

No matter that no individual single from "The Black Album" went higher than No. 16 ("Enter Sandman"), Metallica's fifth studio outing quickly became greater than the sum of its parts. The last leg of the album might drag a bit after "Nothing Else Matters," but yowzas, do the album's high points stand out. The album also came equipped with some solid MTV-era videos, especially "The Unforgiven's" bleak, concrete-filled, black-and-white, youth-to-elderly-man tale. 

That song and video, much like the rest of "The Black Album," illustrate the album's secret sauce: It's got heart. It makes the soul move as much as it does the head bang. So it was that "The Black Album" hit 10 million sales in 1997, six years after it was released, garnered an overdue Grammy for Metallica in 1992 for best metal performance, and fostered countless lifelong fans. It's also still selling to this day, much like Metallica is still breaking live show records in 2026.