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Album Review: Ozzy Osbourne, Ordinary Man

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It’s a digital reboot in the truest sense and right down to the Ozzy Osbourne logo and the font of the Ordinary Man album title under the picture of the man himself, mouth open as if there’s a sign next to his face saying “insert bat here” with an arrow pointing to his mouth, the black eyeliner, and shiny jacket, fog, the whole bit. It’s like the new Star Wars movies, or any number of other things made and remade. Take the essential and most familiar elements of a beloved intellectual property and give them a refreshed look and feel. In the case of Ordinary Man, that means bringing in a star-studded cast featuring the likes guitar prodigy and producer Andrew Watt, a rhythms section of Duff McKagan and Chad Smith, and high-profile guest-star cameos from Elton JohnSlashTom Morello, and — giving any number of weird uncles something to talk about with their pop-loving younger relatives — Post Malone and Travis Scott, and essentially building a modern-sounding Ozzy record.

The songs — there are 11 of them, or 10 and a bonus track as it’s presented on the CD, which, yes, I bought — must be and are unfuckwithably tight. The guitar work must be and is top notch in the spirit of Ozzy‘s past work alongside heroes like Randy RhoadsJake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde. There must be and is a balance of bruisers and ballads, a couple of Beatles references in the George Martin-esque strings capping the title-track and the McCartney-style keyboard/piano bounce and backing vocals in the build of the somewhat overblown “Holy for Tonight,” which moves into a more modern pop-sounding progression before rounding out and giving way to the needless but speedy “It’s a Raid” and the hip-hop infused bonus track “Take What You Want,” both collaborations with Post Malone that are hardly Osbourne‘s first time delving into hip-hop. One recalls a collaboration with DMX and Ol’ Dirty Bastard on a South Park compilation CD in the late ’90s. These things are all cyclical.

And like a lot of digital reboots, there’s much about Ordinary Man that is inarguable. While Ozzy himself, as a persona, is well past being the coked-up madman of his earliest post-Black Sabbath days — lest we forget that his classic solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz, turns 40 later this year — and he’s mostly shed the “prince of darkness” image (this cover art notwithstanding), he remains inarguably and grandly charismatic. There are moments throughout Ordinary Man where he feels almost superfluous. Songs like “Under the Graveyard” or “Today is the End” carry an unmistakable mark of his work and style, and yet one almost has to search to hear Ozzy himself — his actual voice — within the shroud of the massive amount of production surrounding. Yet these tracks are, again, unfuckwithably tight and they and others surrounding them are likewise-proportionate in their catchiness. Meticulously, impeccably constructed, from the opening “Straight to Hell” onward, they very purposefully cast forth an Ozzy record for “today’s world.”

ozzy osbourne

If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the 1990s marketing obsession with things being “x-treme.” From fast cars to kids’ yogurt, everything had to fuel an “x-treme” lifestyle, even as the entirety of Generation X was accused by their Baby Boomer elders of being slackers — great times, and familiar in many ways. As we enter a new decade and the 2020s remain as yet undefined, Ordinary Man nonetheless carries with it the hallmarks of 2010s popular culture, even down to the simple fact of its existence. It is a thing that has been essentially made before being remade in a polished, lens-flare-laced and palatable way for a different generational audience. Its tracks are frontloaded in terms of putting the best material first thinking that the listenership won’t last the entire 49-minute stretch — which many won’t — and it is built around several key singles and “focus tracks” that serve a basic and relatable theme.

Perhaps most in the spirit of the modern reboot, Ordinary Man tells a story, and “storytelling,” from a marketing standpoint, is essential. In songs like “Straight to Hell,” “All My Life,” “Goodbye,” “Ordinary Man” — the new video for which seems to be Ozzy actually watching a movie of his life; indeed much of the album seems to be selling a screenplay for a heavy metal biopic that, almost sadly, will probably be pretty good despite igniting a fire of internet complaints when Geezer Butler is never mentioned — as well as “Under the Graveyard,” “Today is the End” and even “Holy for Tonight,” there is an ongoing frame of examining mortality across the proceedings. Osbourne, whose diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease was recently unveiled on Good Morning America, has canceled tours owing to health problems and injuries, and has amassed a hard-lived 71 years, and is well within his rights to say something like, “Don’t know why I’m still alive” on the title cut. Some cucumbers are just better pickled, I guess.

But all of these elements — the songwriting, the soaring guitar solos from Watt, who comes across as no less a shredder than any of the esteemed shoes he might be filling in that role, the digitized, pitch-corrected ‘layers of Ozz,’ the dopey but fun “Scary Little Green Men” and the who-actually-let-him-use-the-word-“defecate”-in-these-lyrics of the opening track — all combine to make a record that is undeniably Ozzy Osbourne circa 2020. Will Ordinary Man be the work for which Ozzy is remembered after he’s gone? Not a chance; his legacy was set decades ago. But it is probably the most relevant work he’s done since 1995’s Ozzmosis, even though the last 25 years accounts for three studio albums — 2001’s Down to Earth, 2007’s Black Rain and 2010’s Scream — and the 2005 Under Cover covers collection, and if it is to be his final outing, then the energy brought to it by Watt and McKagan and Smith, as well as a number of keyboardists and the other players involved, has not been misused, and doing some of your best work in a quarter-century isn’t a bad way to go out.

Will “the kids” dig it? More likely they’ll just wonder who that old guy is on stage next to Post Malone shouting at them to “go fucking crazy” (yes, even that catchphrase makes it onto the record), but whatever. A few resonant hooks, a lot of familiar pieces put together in familiar ways, and Ozzy himself at the center of it. It’s got enough of everything to make for a successful franchise reboot. The only question that remains, then, is what’s to be done about a sequel.

Ozzy Osbourne, “Straight to Hell” official video

Ozzy Osbourne on Thee Facebooks

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Ozzy Osbourne website

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One Response to “Album Review: Ozzy Osbourne, Ordinary Man

  1. Ogre says:

    Thanks for this! I wasn’t gonna listen to it, but you did! I still ain’t gonna

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