Paranoid was Black Sabbath's second album -- and their second released in 1970, no less, which is a thing bands did back in the day -- and it's rightly considered one of the defining and most influential albums of the heavy metal genre. There was certainly no sophomore slump. Iconic metal songs like "Iron Man," "War Pigs," and the breakneck title track make the first side of the album one of the greatest in metal history, and they are complemented by the underrated second side, featuring "Electric Funeral," "Hand of Doom," and "Fairies Wear Boots."
I feel like I have to say this whenever I discuss early Black Sabbath records, but now that Black Sabbath has been around for 50 years, I think sometimes it's easy to forget how truly revolutionary they were. There was nothing like Paranoid (or their first album) in 1970, both musically and lyrically. This isn't "I"ll Be There," "Tears of a Clown," or "I Think I Love You" (all #1 songs in the second half of 1970). This is some dark, heady shit set to some dark, heady music.
Paranoid became the band's first #1 album in the UK, and it also reached the Top 5 on the album charts in several other countries and went to #12 on the Billboard album chart. It has since gone platinum four times in the U.S. The title track went to #4 on the UK pop charts, making it the band's highest-charting song ever in their native country. It also went to #61 on the Billboard Hot 100, while "Iron Man" went to #52, making those the only two Black Sabbath songs that ever charted on the Billboard Hot 100, which is kind of crazy.
Favorite song from Side 1: "War Pigs"
"War Pigs" is the first track on the album, and it's my favorite Black Sabbath song. It was originally named "Walpurgis" after the pagan holiday, and it was a commentary on how the "real Satanists" were politicians and warmongers who used the working class to fight their wars. The record company thought it sounded too Satanic. Setting aside that the band's name is Black Sabbath, they changed the name to "War Pigs," but the anti-war subject matter remained. At nearly eight-minutes, it starts off slow and plodding, with air raid sirens in the background, and then picks up and kicks into the main riff at about the 50-second mark. I get goosebumps whenever Ozzy sings that first line that grabbed me the first time I ever heard it in my high school football locker room before a game. "Generals gathered in their masses / just like witches at black masses." It's right then when you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. This song has great dark imagery ("in the fields, a body's burning," "now in darkness world stops turning / ashes where the body's burning," "day of judgment, God is calling / on their knees, the war pigs crawling"). If there was ever a non-flower-power protest song, this is it.
Favorite song from Side 2: "Fairies Wear Boots"
Can I really say that I like Side 2 better than Side 1? Yes, yes I can. The heavy riff of "Electric Funeral" is matched by its lyrics about a nuclear apocalypse, and then the middle section of the song breaks into a frenzy before returning to that riff. "Hand of Doom" is slow, almost jazz-influenced seven minutes about the perils of hard drug addiction that faced soldiers returning from Vietnam. Bill Ward's drumming is fantastic. "Rat Salad" is one of the better song names ever, and it's a great little instrumental before we get to "Fairies Wear Boots" (also sometimes called "Jack The Stripper / Fairies Wear Boots" on some North American versions of the album). There are several accounts on how the title came about. In one version, it's an anti-skinhead song, prompted by a violent encounter with some skinheads in London (who were wearing boots). In another version, it was inspired by a weed-smoking session when Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler claimed to have seen actual fairies in a park. Whatever was the true inspiration for the song, it's a great metal song with a warning against psychedelic drug abuse.
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