Black Label Society has released the official music video for “Ozzy’s Song,” a tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne, directed by Justin H. Reich of Three Thirty-three Creative. The track closes out the band’s new album, Engines of Demolition, released 03/27 via MNRK Heavy, the follow-up to 2021’s Doom Crew Inc., which also includes previously released singles “Name in Blood”, “Broken and Blind”, “The Gallows”, and “Lord Humungus”.
Speaking to São Paulo’s 89 FM A Rádio Rock, Zakk Wylde explained how the song came together. The music had been sitting in the can for the better part of four years, but the lyrics only came after Ozzy‘s death (via Blabbermouth): “I had the music written ’cause we’d been writing this album for the last three and a half years, almost four years,” he said. “We stockpiled all these songs. And I was really happy with the way the music came out. And then I figured that eventually I’ll finish the song.”
“But then after we laid Ozzy to rest, when we got back home, we took a break from Pantera [touring]. I sat in a little library room in our house. I just put the headphones on at about one o’clock in the morning, and I was looking at a book of Ozzy, and I just wrote the lyrics. And that’s what came out.”
The title itself was never really a decision. Wylde‘s wife, Barbaranne, had been playing the track on repeat in the car, and the working title became the only title it could ever have: “My wife would always be listening to it in the truck,” he said. “She’d be, like, ‘Babe, put on Ozzy‘s song again.’ So that was pretty much just the working title.
“People would always be asking, ‘I wonder since Zakk wrote a song for Dimebag [Darrell Abbott], and now we sing it for Vinnie [Paul Abbott] as well with “In This River” — I wonder if Zakk will write a song for Ozzy on the new album.’ So it’s only fitting. We just called it ‘Ozzy’s Song’. That’s how we ended up with ‘Ozzy’s Song’.”
Wylde also addressed the band’s decision to bring Ozzy‘s “No More Tears” into their current live set — a choice that traces back to his appearance at the BRIT Awards, where he performed the track alongside Robbie Williams, Robert Trujillo, Adam Wakeman, and Tommy Clufetos to mark Ozzy‘s lifetime achievement honour.
“I called the fellows up,” he said. “I said, ‘Man, we’ll put that in the set when we get back home before we go out and do the Engines of Demolition crusade.’ A little ode to the boss.”
Wylde first joined Ozzy‘s band in 1987 after sending the singer a demo tape and went on to play on virtually every Osbourne solo record through the decades, including No More Tears (1991), Ozzmosis (1995), and Black Rain (2007). He formed Black Label Society in 1998 alongside that work. Order of the Black (2010) and Catacombs of the Black Vatican (2014) both reached the top five on the hard rock album charts.
The post BLACK LABEL SOCIETY Share Official Music Video For OZZY OSBOURNE’s Tribute Track, “Ozzy’s Song” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
