Black Sabbath

Released: July 1, 1980

Songwriter: Bill Ward Geezer Butler Tony Iommi Ozzy Osbourne

Producer: Patrick Meehan

[Verse 1]
What you get and what you see
Things that don’t come easily
Feeling happy in my pain
Icicles within my brain (Cocaine)

[Verse 2]
Something blowing in my head
Winds of ice that soon will spread
Down to freeze my very soul
Makes me happy, makes me cold

[Chorus]
My eyes are blind, but I can see
The snowflakes glisten on the tree
The sun no longer sets me free
I feel the snowflakes freezing me

[Instrumental Bridge]

[Verse 3]
Let the winter sunshine on
Let me feel the frost of dawn
Build my dreams on flakes of snow
Soon I’ll feel the chilling glow

[Bridge]
Right!
Don’t you think I know what I’m doing
Don’t tell me that it’s doing me wrong
You’re the one that’s really the loser
This is where I feel I belong
Right!

[Verse 4]
Kiss the world with winter flowers
Turn my days to frozen hours
Lying snowblind in the sun
Will my ice age ever come?

From their start as a heavy blues-rock band called Earth in 1968, Black Sabbath survived over four decades with a total of 19 studio albums and numerous hits, but only “Paranoid” reached the top 10 UK Singles Chart, putting together one of the greatest rock bands of all time and setting the standards for music in their genre.

Virtually every single heavy metal band has cited the early Black Sabbath albums as a major musical influence and Black Sabbath have at least played some part in laying the foundations for most of heavy metal’s sub-genres, including thrash metal (“Symptom of the Universe” and “Into the Void”), doom metal (“Black Sabbath”) and stoner metal (“Sweet Leaf”). The band also explored many rock sub-genres, including hard rock (“Paranoid”), blues rock (“N.I.B.”), psychedelic rock (“Planet Caravan”) and, of course, the traditional heavy metal, being one of the precursors of this genre.

They were ranked by MTV as the “Greatest Metal Band” of all time and placed second in VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” list. Rolling Stone magazine ranked them number 85 in their “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.” They have sold over 70 million records worldwide. Black Sabbath were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. They have also won two Grammy Awards for Best Metal Performance.

more tracks from the album

Past Lives

From the albums

Live at Last (1980)
Past Lives (2002)

Black Sabbath popular songs

Snowblind [Live at Last]Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

Past Lives