July 22nd, 2025, has managed to cement itself as a day that music lovers worldwide will remember, for it’s the day that Ozzy Osbourne died.
People everywhere stood around in shock, staring blankly at their phones as they read the heartbreaking statement shared by Osbourne’s family: “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey”, it began, “that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning”.
This one hit different for a lot of music fans. While it’s relatively normal for us to mourn artists that we care about and connect with, there was more to Osbourne than that. He wasn’t just a singer, he wasn’t just a rockstar, he was a representation of the fact that it was okay to be different, and that the mainstream world has room for something a little more rogue.
Any genre of music that you like today that veers towards the alternative, whether that’s hard rock, heavy metal, shoegaze, emo, and all things in between, owes some level of itself to Osbourne. He himself would be the first to admit that his musical style hasn’t trickled into all of these sounds, but his ideology and what Black Sabbath represented certainly did.
Of course, while Osbourne was a representative of alternative music across the board, the genre he was closest associated with was heavy metal. This kind of music was unlike anything that people had heard prior. It had a rock influence, sure, but it was presented in a way that championed dread, pain, and fear. It was darker, but there was something about the said darkness that people found alluring, and with that strange draw towards the macabre, heavy metal was born.
It’s always interesting when an artist is credited with starting their own branch of music, or at least with contributing towards one, as the thought strikes of where they get their inspiration from. Well, despite being the voice of something genuinely new, there were still some 1960s bands that Osbourne enjoyed listening to and who he considered his inspirations on some level.
Like the majority of music lovers throughout the ‘60s, Osbourne had a special place in his heart for The Beatles. He would speak very highly of the band and credited them with reintroducing fun into the UK while the country was still licking its wounds following the end of World War II. “Nothing really happened to me in my life until The Beatles happened,” he said, “Then it was like someone had turned the world into me. They’ve played ‘She Loves You’ on the radio and I remember thinking ‘F*cking hell, this is incredible’. From that moment after I heard ‘She Loves You’, I knew I wanted to be a rock star for the rest of my life.”
While The Beatles might have pioneered a specific sound in the ‘60s, some of the other bands making music at the time would be quick to remind you that the Fab Four weren’t the only group that saw success. Osbourne also stepped beyond the mop-top quartet to listen to these bands resonating with radio-worshippers worldwide, and found inspiration in their eccentric use of rhythm, melody and overall musical talent.
Some of the bands he was drawn to included the likes of Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, The Tremeloes, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the band who displayed anything but a roaring silence, Manfred Mann. While Osbourne is frequently credited with starting his own unique style of music, that doesn’t mean there weren’t the sounds of other bands chirping in his ear at the time.
When he was working on Black Sabbath’s debut album, which would help change the face of music, Ozzy was happily soaking up influence from those who conformed to the sound of the charts, with the thought of building his own empire on the airwaves.
