“I feel unhappy I feel so sad
I’ve lost the best friend
That I ever had”
Lord knows I’ve been going through a lot of changes these past seven months, but everything that has transpired would be a lot more difficult to endure if it weren’t for two things: 1. My family 2. The music of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
I was a fan long before I became a writer and the fact that my nine-year-old son’s passion for the material has come to rival my own remains a constant source of light amongst the darkness. At a time when algorithms are trying their darndest to divide and conquer, the moments that he and I share when listening to or talking about the catalog are a reminder of how music cuts through the noise to bring people together.
When the news of Ozzy’s death hit on July 22, we were both overwhelmed with emotion and decided to honor the Prince of Darkness’s legacy by devouring nothing but his discography for a week straight. If the only image you have in your head is of an inebriated Ozzy yelling incoherent nothings at his cat on MTV, I implore you to go back and discover just how brilliant those early albums are.
It makes perfect sense that Ozzy held John Lennon in such high esteem, because he was the epitome of the working-class hero that Lennon sang about. He loved his family, loved his fans, and stayed the humble kid from Birmingham until the end despite ongoing attempts by the mainstream media to define him by his worst day. The reality is that he was far from perfect, and the symbiotic relationship that he and Sharon shared was more labyrinthine than any of us on the outside will ever understand.
What follows are my Top 10 Ozzy solo tracks and Cooper’s rebuttal, so feel free to drop yours in the comments.
As Ozzy himself would say, “God bless you all.”
“Diary of a Madman”
“Over the Mountain”
“You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll”
“Miracle Man”
“Goodbye to Romance”
“The Ultimate Sin”
“Mr. Crowley”
“Mr. Tinkertrain”
“No More Tears”
“Ordinary Man”
Cooper’s Rebuttal
“The Ultimate Sin”
“Shot In the Dark”
“Bark at the Moon”
“Suicide Solution”
“Patient Number 9”
“I Don’t Know”
“No More Tears”
“Under the Graveyard”
“Perry Mason”
“Crazy Train”
Music N' Other Drugs 
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