The song Ozzy Osbourne couldn’t have been any better: “The most amazing thing”

Posted On January 2, 2026January 2, 2026

There will never be another artist with half the career that Ozzy Osbourne had.

‘The Prince of Darkness’ was certainly a lot more eccentric than the average rock and roll frontman, but while it’s easy to see him as either a sinister figure or the lovable dad on The Osbournes, both of them were caricatures of what he was really like half the time. He was far from the burnout that everyone suspected he was, and when listening to new material, he had a keen ear for what was going to be a monster hit.

Even in his years in Black Sabbath, though, Osbourne usually gets critiqued for not exactly being the most important member of the band. After all, Tony Iommi was the one who was coming out with one legendary riff after another, but whereas Osbourne would normally sing the riff, his way of playing around with the melody and writing genius vocal lines over the top of everything is what made a song like ‘Paranoid’ go from a decent hard rock tune to the foundations of heavy metal.

But Osbourne didn’t want to see himself as a metal artist in many respects. The term was often used in a derogatory way when describing Sabbath’s early records, and Osbourne preferred to see himself as the vocalist of a hard rock band whenever he played. Then again, he didn’t really have a choice once he started getting treated like the patron saint of all things metal in his solo career.

Everyone from Metallica to Def Leppard were open about how much they loved Sabbath when working with Osbourne, but even his solo records aren’t metal in the traditional sense. Most of them are often defined by the guitar players on the record, and while Randy Rhoads helped bring a decent helping of classical music into the mix, Zakk Wylde is the closest that anyone has ever come to matching Osbourne on the road.

Wylde was his partner in crime from the minute they released No Rest for the Wicked, but on No More Tears, Osbourne didn’t want to make a record that was simply good. He pulled out all the stops to create the kind of blockbuster record he always wanted to hear, and of all the massive producers that he got to work with this time around, who would have thought the most heartbreaking tune on the record would have come from Lemmy?

The Motorhead frontman was the exact opposite of what the charts usually wanted, but when listening to ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’, Osbourne felt that the perfect song had landed right in his lap, saying, “It was the most amazing thing. I couldn’t have written it better myself because it was just so perfectly me, you know? [Lemmy] knew what I was trying to say.” Despite Lemmy’s softer side coming out, it’s Osbourne that really has to sell the whole thing.

Wylde’s solo does feel like a natural extension of what people like Joe Walsh had done in Eagles, but ‘The Prince of Darkness’ showing a bit of light is one of the most heart-wrenching moments of his career. Every single rock and roll troubadour has hoped to write a song capturing this kind of feeling, and in just a few lines, Osbourne played the role of the regretful husband that knows he’s been away from too long perfectly.

And when Osbourne played the tune as part of his final-ever live performance, it almost felt too real for him and Wylde to sing along with. He had given everything he could to his audience, and even though he would be dead within a few weeks of that concert, it’s nice to know that he had finally made it home after all those years.

Related Topics