Songs About Sleep: The 15 Best of All Time
- Posted on April 27, 2019
- Articles
- By Neil Hedley
10. Enter Sandman - Metallica
The original lyrics for "Enter Sandman" contained references to crib death. Thankfully, at least one band member (and the album's producer, Bob Rock) suggested that Metallica frontman James Hetfield had something better in him. Since its release as the debut single from Metallica's self-titled 1991 album, it has become one of the seminal songs of the metal genre, and as of this writing the video has been viewed more than 325 million times.
9. (Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At All - The Fifth Dimension
Sometimes, rewrites don't take. In Metallica's case, a rewrite may have saved "Enter Sandman". But in the case of our #9 song, it was the opposite. The 3rd verse of "(Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At All" says, "The sleeping pill I took was just a waste of time," which was enough to get it rejected by The Carpenters, who were all set to record it had it not been for what they perceived as a drug reference. Songwriter Tony Macaulay rewrote the line, but later decided he'd rather leave the song intact and have it go to someone else. That someone else turned out to be The Fifth Dimension, who turned it into one of their most successful songs.
8. Talking In Your Sleep - Crystal Gayle
If you've ever awakened to the person next to you, angry at you for no apparent reason, and you later discover that they either had a dream about you where you did something stupid, or that you muttered something in your sleep that infuriated them, this song may have resonated with you. Not to be confused with our #12 song with the same title, this one hit #1 on the Country chart, and crossed over to become a #3 hit on the Adult Contemporary chart. Crystal Gayle (sister of Country icon Loretta Lynn) was already familiar to crossover audiences with songs like, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue", and "When I Dream".
Among the noteworthy things for us in this television performance: No lip-sync.
7. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing - Aerosmith
Were we to tell you that Aerosmith had a place in a list of songs about sleep, it'd be easy to assume the song that made the cut would be "Dream On" from their 1973 self-titled debut album. Except that as we mentioned at the outset, that song doesn't mention sleep at all, and is more about dreaming as synonymous with wishing, instead of something that happens in REM sleep. The Aerosmith classic that gets the nod is from the soundtrack to the film that co-stars Steven Tyler's daughter, Liv - 1998's Armageddon. The song itself can be considered "classic" because it found life as a Country song as well, with Mark Chesnutt's cover that saw time at the top of the Country chart. And indeed, it became Aerosmith's first bona fide #1 song the band ever had in Billboard magazine.
213 million YouTube viewers can't be wrong.
6. Mr. Sandman - The Chordettes
This one, from 1954, is simply a classic. We don't need to say much more. The video is from an appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in 1958. Normally, Bandstand appearances were lip-synced. That's tough for The Chordettes to pull off, given the intricacies of their style. However, there is one voice that seems to come out of nowhere on some of the "bum-bum-bum-bums". We'll let you decide.
