Metallica, one of the biggest selling acts in American history, were born on October 28, 1981 when drummer Lars Ulrich and guitar player/singer James Hetfield got together via Ulrich’s LA Recycler newspaper ad.

Metallica has released ten studio albums, four live albums (including two performances with the San Francisco Symphony), twelve video albums, one cover album, two extended plays, thirty-seven singles and thirty-nine music videos. The band has won nine Grammy Awards from twenty-three nominations, and its last six studio albums (beginning with Metallica) have consecutively debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Metallica ranks as one of the most commercially successful bands of all time, having sold more than 125 million albums worldwide as of 2018. Metallica has been listed as one of the greatest artists of all time by magazines such as Rolling Stone, which ranked the band in 61st place on its list of 100 greatest artists of all time. As of 2017, Metallica is the third-best-selling music artist since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, selling 58 million albums in the United States.