Greatest Hits: Metallica

Twelve songs is a typical music album length. What if we had to condense the entire career of a venerable band like Metallica into a single album? What would that album look like?

As of 2025, Metallica has released 11 full-length albums over their 44-year history as a band. They also have a number of other, non-album releases that have gained popularity. That makes it relatively easy to come up with 12 songs to represent Metallica’s career—I’ll take the most popular song from each album, and also add in the most popular non-album song to round it out at twelve.

To determine popularity, YouTube Music keeps running totals of the number of plays for each song. While this only measures popularity among YouTube Music listeners, it’s the best data I can get quickly and easily.

So without further ado, this is what a “greatest hits” album for Metallica might look like, showing their evolution from oldest to newest songs (with links to listen to each song on YouTube Music):

1. Seek & Destroy
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls
3. Master of Puppets
4. One
5. Nothing Else Matters
6. Until It Sleeps
7. The Unforgiven II
8. Whiskey in the Jar
9. St. Anger
10. The Day That Never Comes
11. Now That We’re Dead
12. Lux Æterna