(Credits: Far Out / Evgeniy Smersh / Original Promo)
Thu 8 January 2026 17:27, UK
The music charts are an oddity. They always have been. They always will be.
The fact that pop pretty much universally dominates them could make an alien believe that it’s the only genre that humans care for and everything else is a niche occasionally dabbled in by a few foolhardy outsiders. However, they would then have a hard time reconciling why festivals are frequently dominated by alternative acts and why some of the biggest-selling albums in history are anything but pop.
On the contrary, pop dominates the singles chart by virtue of how it is consumed and presented. The genre dominates the radio waves as it is the most easily palatable and often the least offensive medium there is. This means that the songs are often served up in a quick blast, resulting in a commercial bubble. Thus, the songs might fire to the top of the charts in a matter of minutes, bombard your eardrums every day for two weeks, and then be forgotten about.
However, it is often the case with less commercially inclined music that it might not be released to quite the same fanfare, but it develops a sustainable legacy thereafter. This is definitely the case when it comes to heavy metal. Take, for instance, AC/DC’s Back in Black. The record may well have evaded much of the mainstream radio, but it now resides among the ten best-selling records of all time list. It is believed that Back in Black has sold a whopping 50million copies worldwide. That’s far from ‘niche’.
Nevertheless, no releases from the record achieved the far easier feat of reaching number one for even a measly week. This head-scratching fact is highly indicative of the way the singles chart operates. However, three lucky metal songs have defied the odds and hit the top spot.
The three metal songs that have topped the charts
The most recent, of course, is the UK Christmas number one, ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against the Machine. And even this rare, thrilling feat by the nu-metal band was achieved retrospectively. The song reached the top spot following a viral campaign by fans. In a bid to better the uber-commercial routine of X Factor winners taking the festive top spot, a guerrilla fan campaign looked to champion an unlikely blast of anti-establishmentarianism.
Its peers in the list have achieved the feat via similar deeds. Iron Maiden’s ‘Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter’ also got to number one in 1990 following a comment from their frontman Bruce Dickinson, who said, “We’re going to release this as a single on Christmas Eve to scare the living daylights out of Cliff Richard”. A battle between Maiden’s track and Richard’s ‘Saviour’s Day’ then ensued. Sadly, the heavy metal rockers had left it too late to release the song for it to sell in time for Christmas, but the following week, it toppled the old brown shoe of man from the top spot in a controversial win.
Lastly, you have Alice Cooper’s classic ‘School’s Out’. While the song’s instrumentation isn’t typically heavy, it would be a sin to classify anything by the Father of Shock Rock as anything other than heavy metal. Once again, this hit tapped into the notion of aligning with a cultural event for an extra momentum push to battle against pop. Breaking up from school became big business, and the track remains one of the best-selling songs from the entire heavy metal / hard rock genre.
However, as for the best-selling metal single of all time? Well, it depends on how strict you are on genre, but ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica remains out in front with well over one million sales despite the fact that it only rose fifth in the UK and 16th in the US. Although it did get to number one in Finland, and more than a few studies have ranked that metal-loving nation the happiest country in the world – read into that what you will
The heavy metal songs to hit number one:‘School’s Out’ – Alice Cooper‘Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter’ – Iron Maiden‘Killing in the Name’ – Rage Against the Machine
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