UK Song Meanings

Few riffs in rock history are as instantly recognizable as the one that opens “Crazy Train.” It’s a sound that has echoed through stadiums, car commercials and countless garage rehearsalsContinue readingThe Meaning of “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne

Endings make the best songs, and “Goodbye to Romance” is one of the finest endings in rock. Tucked into Ozzy Osbourne’s 1980 debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, it arrivedContinue readingThe Meaning of “Goodbye to Romance” by Ozzy Osbourne

By the start of the new millennium, Ozzy Osbourne had been a rock star for more than three decades and had little left to prove. So it was a quietContinue readingThe Meaning of “Dreamer” by Ozzy Osbourne

Every tough guy has a soft spot, and in heavy metal that soft spot usually takes the form of a power ballad. But “Mama, I’m Coming Home” is something rarer,Continue readingThe Meaning of “Mama, I’m Coming Home” by Ozzy Osbourne

Mountains have a long history in the Romantic imagination, standing for the sublime, the unreachable and the point beyond which the familiar world ends. “Over the Mountain,” the thunderous openerContinue readingThe Meaning of “Over the Mountain” by Ozzy Osbourne

Some songs wear their subject on their sleeves, and others smuggle it in through the back door. “Flying High Again” does a bit of both. Released in 1981 on DiaryContinue readingThe Meaning of “Flying High Again” by Ozzy Osbourne

Heavy metal is supposed to be the music of certainty. Its riffs march, its choruses declare, and its singers promise doom or glory with equal conviction. So it’s a deliciousContinue readingThe Meaning of “I Don’t Know” by Ozzy Osbourne

There is a peculiar bleakness in the highway as a symbol. Rock and roll spent decades romanticizing the open road, treating motion as freedom, and then along came “Road toContinue readingThe Meaning of “Road to Nowhere” by Ozzy Osbourne

Some songs announce their intentions in the title, and “Diary of a Madman” is one of them. Closing out the 1981 album of the same name, it stretches across moreContinue readingThe Meaning of “Diary of a Madman” by Ozzy Osbourne

There is a particular kind of misery that only shows up in public when it’s dressed up as swagger, and the mid-eighties metal scene was swimming in it. Into thatContinue readingThe Meaning of “Secret Loser” by Ozzy Osbourne