Peace Sells

Mustaine said he wrote the lyrics on a wall because he had no paper. He said he wrote them because he was tired of people mocking metal and its fans, and that he knew he had something different from the fast songs before it, a song in its own right. The words reflect his political and social views. Ellefson said the band could tell on the tour before the album that it would be a hit.

It was released as the album's second single, with the band's first music video, which became an MTV mainstay. Its opening bass line served as the introduction to MTV News, and Pitchfork wrote that anyone who watched MTV in the late 1980s and early 1990s knows it. In the video a father orders his son to switch off a metal video and put on the news, and the son tells him that this is the news.

Live

A live version recorded at the Phantasy Theatre in Cleveland on 3 June 1987 is on the bonus disc of the 25th anniversary edition. Pitchfork called that performance snarling and ferociously funny.