"Fade to Black" is a song by heavy metal band Metallica from their second album, Ride the Lightning (1984). It was ranked as having the 24th best guitar solo ever by Guitar World readers.

In an interview with drummer Lars Ulrich on the set of the production "MTV Icon: Metallica" in 2003, he recalls how he and bandmate James Hetfield were obsessed with death at the time the album and song were produced.

The lyrics suggest a man contemplating, then eventually committing, suicide. It begins with an acoustic guitar introduction and becomes progressively heavier as the song goes on, similar to their future songs, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), One, and The Day That Never Comes. James Hetfield commented on the song in a later interview,

"That song was a big step for us. It was pretty much our first ballad, so we knew it would freak people out... Recording that song, I learned how frustrating acoustic guitar can be. You could hear every squeak, so I had to be careful. I wrote the song at a friend's house in New Jersey. I was pretty depressed at the time because our gear had just been stolen, and we had been thrown out of our manager's house for breaking shit and drinking his liquor cabinet dry. It's a suicide song, and we got a lot of flak for it, as if kids were killing themselves because of the song. But we also got hundreds of letters from kids telling us how they related to the song and that it made them feel better."