text: Recording and composition "One" was written in November 1987 by Metallica's principal composers James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. The song was released in 1988 as the third and final single of the album. For the first 20 seconds of the song there are a series of sound effects with a battle theme, an artillery barrage and helicopter are heard and continues slightly over a clean tone guitar intro by Hetfield before Kirk Hammett comes in over the top with a clean-toned solo.  Ulrich's drums come in and continues until each chorus, when the guitars become heavy and distorted before returning to clean. There is a second solo by Hammett halfway through the song, before lyrics cut out and the song gradually gets more heavy and distorted until the "machine gun" guitar build up (played alongside double bass drums) before the next, often highly praised, guitar solo by Hammett, and a final dual solo by Hammett and Hetfield. The song begins in  time, and later  as well as .
  In 1991, James Hetfield told Guitar World that he wrote the song's opening Bm-G chord change based on an idea prompted by the Venom song "Buried Alive" from their second studio album, Black Metal.
  The song starts off in a soft melodic setting, but it develops through multiple sections into heavier and faster speed metal sounds, leading up to a tapping solo by Kirk Hammett, and a dual guitar section by Hammett and James Hetfield.
  Concept
  The song is based on the idea of a soldier losing all of his limbs and jaw and being unable to hear, speak, or see, set to a World War I backdrop. In an interview in New Zealand in 1989, Ulrich describes the 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun (based on the 1939 book Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, who also directed the 1971 film) as having a similar theme, and this was the reason it was incorporated into the video.