Black Sabbath: Paranoid (1970)

Listening Notes

Listening to "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath because I just heard of Ozzy's passing. Special RIP album review edition, and I guess I am adding a stone to my musician graveyard.

Listening to this is like a blast straight back into 5th grade and getting into "real music from the radio" with my friends. Warbling "Paranoid" in my room with the lights off while I play air-guitar and pretend I'm in a cover band. Later, in the passenger seat of my friend's car banging our heads to "Iron Man" while circling in the mall parking lot at 11pm. (We did this with all music, this might come up again.)

But listening now is so different from then. I haven't kept them in my regular plays since high school, so while they come up on shuffle and I might not skip a song on the radio, I haven't actively listened to them in decades. It somehow sounds exactly the same but also thicker, like there's more musical quality to it than I could hear before. Part of why I never got into them is because their sound wasn't "big" enough - they were thin metal in a selection of raw, gross hardcore, and I chose the music that filled me up.

I was wrong, they do have a big sound. I guess I didn't know how to recognize it then. Their music is commanding and percussive, with attention-grabbing energy and hypnotic rhythms. There's variation in structure, with dynamic and unpredictable shifts (unpredictable because I don't remember the songs). Their music keeps you a little off-balance with chaos and calm interweaving, making a new story of movement.

Listen to "Hand of Doom" or "Fairies Wear Boots" and tell me all of the different ways your body moves end to end!

Random facts:

• The song "Paranoid" was written in about 20 minutes to fill empty space on the album.
• The album was originally titled "War Pigs" but the record label thought it was a sensitive topic surrounding the Vietnam War. The band didn't know that the album name was changing until they saw the record.
• The song "Iron Man" is NOT about the superhero, it's about a man who forsees the apocalypse but no one believes him, and then he becomes the cause of it.

Favorite tracks:

• War Pigs
• Paranoid
• Planet Caravan
• Iron Man
• Rat Salad