While this might come as a surprise to metalheads who've had the chorus to Metallica's biggest song drilled into their brains for the last 30 years, apparently there're a shit-ton of people out there who have trouble understanding the lyrics of "Enter Sandman."
In a new study conducted by Wordfinder that focuses on "mondegreens" — when a "word or phrase results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung" — the researchers discovered that Metallica's 1991 smash hit is the most commonly misheard song in the U.S., with 70% of the participants thinking that the chorus is, "Eggs and light/End all nights" — a complete bungling of the actual lyrics, "Exit light/Enter night."
According to the data, it was millennial and Gen Z participants who were most likely to mishear "Enter Sandman's" lyrics, but Gen X listeners weren't far off. That said, despite Metallica's song being the most misheard of all the tracks in the study — which also included everything from Drake's "The Motto" and Ariana Grande's "7 Rings" to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — metal, along with R&B, are the genres that are least likely to be misunderstood by listeners. For some reason "Enter Sandman" is just a wacky outlier.
So next time you hear one of your normie friends mumbling, "Eggs and light," make sure you correct them. There are no eggs in never, never land.
