Peace Sells

"Peace Sells"
Single by Megadeth
from the album Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?
ReleasedNovember 1986
Recorded1986
GenreThrash metal
Length4:03
Label
Songwriter(s)Dave Mustaine
Producer(s)
  • Dave Mustaine
  • Randy Burns
Megadeth singles chronology
"Wake Up Dead"
(1986)
"Peace Sells"
(1986)
"Anarchy in the U.K."
(1988)
Music video
"Peace Sells" on YouTube

"Peace Sells" is a song by American thrash metal band Megadeth from their 1986 album Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?, written by Dave Mustaine. It has since been a constant at Megadeth concerts. According to David Ellefson, it became quickly apparent when playing the song live prior to recording the album that "Peace Sells" would be a hit. In 2006, VH1 ranked "Peace Sells" at number 11 on their list of the "40 Greatest Metal Songs" of all time. The song is also known for the distinctive bass intro played by Ellefson.

Music video

A music video was produced for the song, directed by the artist Robert Longo and edited by artist Gretchen Bender. The video includes a dramatic pause in the middle of the song. The interstitial features a teenage boy, wearing a Slayer T-shirt, watching a montage of live Megadeth performances and war footage on his living room television set. The boy's father, states "What is this garbage you're watching? I want to watch the news!," and changes the television channel to a news station using the remote control. His son, replying with "This is the news!," changes it back to the Megadeth performance using the TV set's channel knob. This part of the video was parodied by comedian Brian Posehn in his Metal by Numbers video. The beginning of the video also showed the explosion of the original low-cost skull used on the cover of the previous album, Killing is My Business... and Business is Good!.

The video is notable for introducing both the dramatic interlude and the rapid-fire editing of images in the closing segment of the song.

Appearances and covers

  • The song appears in (2017) Season 2, Episode 4 "The Oath" in the Amazon Prime Series Billions when Bobby Axelrod is getting ready for a deposition with U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York, Chuck Rhoades.
  • The song appears in the video games NHL 10, Rock Band 2, True Crime: Streets of LA and downloadable content for Guitar Hero 5 and Rock Band 4 for Rock Band's “Rock Band Rewind” DLC. The song also appears in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the fictional in-game radio station "V-Rock".
  • The opening bassline was used as the theme for MTV News, but Mustaine claims he never received any royalties for MTV's usage of the song.
  • Tigertailz covered it and it appears on their 1991 B-sides compilation album Banzai!.
  • An acoustic cover appears on Driving Mrs. Satan's 2016 album Did You Mrs. Me?.

See also


This page was last updated at 2022-05-25 16:54 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari