Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne, the often-shocking heavy metal icon who set the template for heavy metal music as the founding frontman for Black Sabbath, died July 22, 2025, at the age of 76.

Raised in a working class household in Birmingham, England, Ozzy Osbourne heard the Beatles in 1963 and decided he wanted to be a musician. To that end, he formed the band Rare Breed with bassist Geezer Butler in 1967. The pair then linked up with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward to form a band briefly called Earth. After realizing another band had the same name, they changed it to something more fitting for the dark music they had started pioneering: Black Sabbath.

Osbourne and Black Sabbath played a heavy, brooding, blues-inspired style of rock that took lyrical influences from the occult and religious texts. Propelled by songs like "Iron Man," "War Pigs," "Paranoid," and "Sweet Leaf," the band's first three records (released in just two years) all but wrote the rulebook for the genre that would come to be called "heavy metal." By 1973's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," their fourth record, the band was receiving critical acclaim as well as commercial success. However, by the end of the decade, tensions within the band began to run high, and in 1979, Osbourne was fired from the band he helped create.

Undeterred, Osbourne put together a new band alongside guitarist Randy Rhoads (1956–1982), and in 1981 released his debut solo album, "Blizzard of Ozz." Widely considered one of the greatest metal records of all time, the album went platinum, led by the now classic "Crazy Train." While Sabbath continued to record and tour with a series of new singers, Osbourne's star rose even further without them. Albums like "Bark at the Moon" and "No More Tears" were mainstays of the metal scene in the 1980s.

As alternative music took over the rock airwaves in the 1990s, Osbourne's place in the music and pop culture scene appeared to be on the wane. Then, in 2002, "The Osbournes" debuted on MTV. Featuring Ozzy; his wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne; and their children, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, the reality television show shined a more playful spotlight on a performer who had become notorious for his drug and alcohol abuse, and for the dark themes of his music. The show was a huge hit and led to Sharon Osbourne becoming almost as big a star as Ozzy.

Despite the crossover success of the show, Osbourne never stopped making music. He reunited with Black Sabbath in 2013 for the album "13," and he continued to release solo albums, 13 in all as of 2022. Between all his projects, he sold over 100 million records in his lifetime. Osbourne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, among many other awards. He is widely considered one of the most influential rock musicians of the 20th Century.

By Eric San Juan

(Image: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)