I wasn’t a diehard fan. I didn’t memorize lyrics or follow every twist in his tour dates or tattoos. I didn’t grow up with Black Sabbath posters on my walls or devil horns in the air. But when I heard the news—Ozzy Osbourne has passed away—I felt something cave in anyway. That’s what happens when the loudest people leave quietly.
For all the showmanship and screaming and staged chaos, Ozzy was always more human than monster. That was the secret, wasn’t it? Behind the eyeliner and crucifixes and heavy metal growl, there was this soft-spoken, haunted, hilariously fragile man who never tried to hide the mess. He just leaned into it until it looked like art.
And for that, I respected the hell out of him.
The Showman Who Never Pretended to Be Sane
Ozzy’s genius wasn’t just in the music. It was in his commitment to contradiction. He was the bat-biting wild card and the shaky-handed survivor. The cackling frontman who once wet himself onstage and the wide-eyed father making scrambled eggs on reality TV. He didn’t evolve—he exposed. Every scar. Every relapse. Every tangled thought that most people hide behind sunglasses and handlers.
He let us watch him fall apart, and then kept letting us in while he tried—over and over—to hold the pieces in place with duct tape and humor and the occasional demon growl. If that’s not punk, what is?
Sharon, the Anchor
You can’t talk about Ozzy without talking about Sharon. Their love story was loud and bloody and not always pretty—but it was real. She wasn’t just his wife. She was his battlefield medic, manager, protector, and co-conspirator. And when he couldn’t carry himself, she carried the weight for both of them.
Their marriage wasn’t some airbrushed magazine spread. It was a war story. And they won, even if the battles kept coming.
To Sharon, their kids, and everyone who knew the quiet version of Ozzy—the one behind the curtain—I hope you know how many people saw him. Not just the legend. The man.
The Family That Lived in Chaos Publicly
Before reality TV became a brand extension, The Osbournes gave us something unfiltered and strange: a famous family who didn’t pretend to be perfect. Ozzy wandering the halls mumbling to himself. Sharon yelling across the house like a loving banshee. Kelly and Jack as chaotic as any teen siblings but wearing fame like an itchy sweater.
It wasn’t glamorous. It was messy and surreal and sometimes hard to watch. And somehow, that made it comforting. Because fame didn’t save them from dysfunction. They just let the cameras roll.
There’s something brave in that. Something oddly generous.
A Survivor in a World That Doesn’t Let You Be One
Ozzy shouldn’t have made it out of the ‘80s. Or the ‘90s. Or that ATV accident. Or the addictions. Or the constant pressure to be Ozzy when maybe he just wanted to be John.
But he kept showing up. Even when his body gave out. Even when his voice cracked. Even when people treated him like a meme instead of a man.
In a culture that devours the broken for sport, he made survival its own form of performance art. And somewhere in all the absurdity—onstage and off—he carved out a space for anyone who’s ever felt too damaged to be loved.
No More Tears, Just Thanks
It’s easy to reduce someone like Ozzy to noise and nostalgia. But I think we owe him more than that.
We owe him for the vulnerability. For the chaos. For the honesty. For making room in rock and roll for fragility and fear. For showing that you can be terrifying and tender in the same breath. For living out loud and falling down in public and still getting up, even when your knees betray you.
So no, I wasn’t a superfan. But I watched. I listened. I respected the hell out of the man who never stopped screaming into the void—and never pretended the void wasn’t real.
Rest easy, Ozzy.
You outlived the myth.
Now you get to rest like a man.