{"id":694723,"date":"2026-01-14T05:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T05:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694723\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T05:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T05:31:12","slug":"the-song-ozzy-osbourne-called-one-of-the-great-metal-anthems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694723\/","title":{"rendered":"The song Ozzy Osbourne called one of the great metal anthems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ozzy<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Daniel Zappe)<\/p>\n

Tue 13 January 2026 19:30, UK <\/p>\n

For someone that was synonymous with all things macabre, Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> wasn\u2019t all that comfortable being considered a metal artist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Black Sabbath first formed, he wasn\u2019t looking to invent a whole new genre, and while they may have become musical heroes almost by accident, it didn\u2019t hurt that he was treated like a rock and roll elder statesman the minute he struck out on his own after Sabbath. But for all of the fantastic riffs that blared out of Tony Iommi\u2019s amplifier, there were just as many artists that were willing to be a little bit dirtier than those classic licks.<\/p>\n

But \u2018The Prince of Darkness\u2019 tended to have a heart of gold whenever he began talking with bands he took out on tour. It\u2019s one thing for him not to get along with every single person he came in contact with, but at heart, he was still a passionate fan of music, so it was a thrill for him to see everyone from Motley Crue to Metallica<\/a> giving him a run for his money whenever they opened up for him.<\/p>\n

Going out on tour with Osbourne might as well have been a right of passage for the metal legends, but the generation that \u2018The Ozzman\u2019 came from had a much different outlook on the genre. They were hard rock at the end of the day, and chances are no metal band would have been able to get away with a song that sounded as Beatlesque as \u2018Goodbye to Romance\u2019 off of Blizzard of Ozz. <\/p>\n

If Osbourne took inspiration from The Beatles whenever he sang, Lemmy was his Stonesy counterpart whenever he hit the road with Motorhead. He was the epitome of what a rock and roll star was supposed to sound like, but between his everyday rotation of booze and drugs, he always found a way to keep himself at the right level up until the moment he passed away. And while \u2018Ace of Spades\u2019 might have been the most overplayed tune in their catalogue, Osbourne felt it was like that for a reason.<\/p>\n

Sabbath had already made classics like Paranoid by this point, but Osbourne felt that Lemmy\u2019s tune was among the greatest songs in hard rock, saying<\/a>, \u201cThat was their \u2018Paranoid\u2019 as far as I\u2019m concerned. It even got them on Top of the Pops, so it\u2019s a good job Lemmy hadn\u2019t called the band Bastard. I mean, \u2018Ace of Spades\u2019 is just one of the great metal anthems of all time. When that came out, I was like, okay, they\u2019ve made it. They\u2019re gonna be around forever now.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was more than the riffs that made Lemmy one of the greatest bandleaders in rock and roll. People can talk about the myth behind Motorhead, but if Sabbath pioneered pieces of metal as a whole, a tune like \u2018Overkill\u2019 took everything that Lemmy stood for and pushed to into speed metal territory, to the point where nearly any metal band could easily get away with doing a half-decent cover of the tune and sound convincing. <\/p>\n

Underneath those mutton chops and the largest facial warts, though, Osbourne remembered Lemmy as a sweetheart whenever he collaborated with him. He was someone that truly believed in the brotherhood of rock and roll, and even if he saved a lot of his heartfelt side for the records he made, the fact that he was able to make something as gutwrenching as \u2018Mama I\u2019m Coming Home\u2019 is insane considering the reputation that he had.<\/p>\n

Then again, that was part of the whole appeal of Lemmy in the first place. The regular rules for rockstars never really applied to him, and if anyone tried to get in his way when he was writing his tunes, he was going to either go in the exact opposite direction or give them a good thrashing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Daniel Zappe) Tue 13 January 2026 19:30, UK For someone that was synonymous with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,181219,123308,269,29260,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-694723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-lemmy","10":"tag-motorhead","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-ozzy-osbourne","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115891816638129090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}