Ozzy Osbourne’s 20 Best Songs: Staff Picks

You might not need all 10 fingers — or even both hands — to count the number of figures who have been as impactful on rock history as Ozzy Osbourne. As frontman for the legendary Birmingham, England quartet Black Sabbath, Osbourne set the tone in the early ’70s for pretty much everything we would come to know as heavy metal: the sound, the look, the attitude, the subject matter. Entire genres, subcultures and mini-universes sprang from mere song sections found on Sabbath’s early opuses, with the man who came to be known as the Prince of Darkness serving as the equally scary and seductive guide to rock’s new underworld.

For the next half century, Ozzy would continue to shepherd metal towards new frontiers. After splitting with Sabbath in the late ’70s, he became a solo star in the ’80s, thriving alongside soon-to-be legendary axemen Randy Rhoads and Zakk Wylde, while also playing godfather to the emergent stars of the decade’s metal mainstream crossover. Then in the late ’90s, at the dawn of the nu-metal boom, he gave heads an annual gathering place as the leader of Ozzfest, the yearly traveling festival bringing the genre’s best and brightest to a trepidatious town near you. And in the 21st century, he served as metal’s ambassador to the masses, serving as the genre’s greatest legacy icon everywhere from primetime reality TV to Post Malone blockbuster albums.

And all along the way, there were great songs — headbangers that have proven as enduring and timeless as any soul, country or folk songs of their era, which filled hearts and packed stadiums right up until just weeks before Osbourne’s death at age 76. On the sad day of his final homecoming, here are our staff picks for the Ozzman’s 20 all-time greatest, combining his solo work with his Black Sabbath days.