changes

967. ‘Changes’, by Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Another of 2003’s slightly out of kilter number ones: Tatu, Room 5, R Kelly, Evanescence, Blu Cantrell… Now this.

Changes, by Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, 14th – 21st December 2003

Although as we are nearing Christmas, traditionally a time of love, joy, and slightly out of kilter songs, perhaps this one isn’t as surprising. It’s a cover of the old Black Sabbath ballad, featuring Sabbath’s lead singer Ozzy Osbourne, and his daughter Kelly, plus a few lyrical tweaks to change this from a song about a romantic relationship to one about a father-daughter relationship.

So, ‘woman’ is now ‘baby’, the ‘I’ is now ‘we’, while the I love you daddy… line really makes me flinch. Is it serious? Is it a novelty? Is it a pointless indulgence by a fabulously rich, celebrity family? (Christmas cards with family portraits are bad enough, but here we have a freaking family duet just in time for the holidays…) Or is it just a cynical cash-in, with the Osbournes at the height of their MTV series fame? Apparently Kelly had demanded her dad write a song about her – he’d previously written songs for his other two children – which feels quite in keeping with her bratty persona from the show.

I don’t think the style of the song suits either of their voices. Ozzy sounds strained, compared to the original – decades of ingesting every narcotic known to humankind taking their toll – while if there is a style that suits Kelly’s voice, this isn’t it (though I’ll admit, I did like her cover of ‘Papa Don’t Preach’). Add in an orchestra and a choir, and you lose the original’s simplicity in a schmaltzy swamp.

For The Prince of Darkness’s only chart-topper I do wish it rocked a bit more. Or, indeed, at all. But the original was also an outlier in the band’s discography, featuring neither guitars nor drums. It had been inspired by Sabbath drummer Bill Ward’s separation from his wife, but wasn’t released as a single until Ozzy recorded a live version in the early nineties. Another notable version of the song is a much more soulful cover by Charles Bradley, made famous as the theme to Netflix’s ‘Big Mouth’.

Despite clearly being released with the Christmas market in mind, ‘Changes’ was never really in contention for the Xmas #1, thanks to an epic chart battle that we’ll get to in our next post. This was Ozzy’s sole UK Top 10 as a ‘lead’ artist, though he had featured once with Black Sabbath (‘Paranoid’, in 1970) and alongside Kim Basinger, on Was (Not Was)’s 1993 hit ‘Shake Your Head’. Kelly outdid her dad in this regard, by three to one. And this is only the second, and so far final, father-daughter #1, after Frank and Nancy.

Ozzy, fifty-five at time of release, becomes the third man in their sixth decade to top the charts in 2003, after Elton John and Oliver Cheatham. The year of the late-middle-aged man! He sadly died a few months ago, meaning that this record takes on an even more bittersweet tone listening to it now (although I still think it’s fairly crap…)

This video quality isn’t great, so here’s one with better audio…

And B-sides… ‘Space Oddity’, by David Bowie

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

It’s time for part two of our semi-regular B-sides feature. My first was on Oasis, the band perhaps most famous for the quality of their B-sides. For my second I’m turning to one of the great chart-topping singles…

‘Space Oddity’ was David Bowie’s first chart hit, and his first number one. Not at the same time, however. It made #5 on its first release in 1969, tying in with the Apollo 11 moon landing, before belatedly making #1 six years later, after a re-release. (Read my original post here.)

For the 1975 rerelease, another old tune was chosen as the first B-side. ‘Changes’ had featured on Bowie’s 1971 album ‘Hunky Dory’, but had flopped completely as a single in early 1972. (Amazingly, Bowie had been looking like a one-hit wonder following the original ‘Space Oddity’, and had to wait until his Ziggy Stardust era for another hit.)

Despite now being one of his signature songs, you can kind of see why ‘Changes’ failed to catch on at the time. What exactly is it? Is it glam? Is it jazz? The chorus and the middle-eight are great power pop. It’s listed as ‘Art-pop’, but then that sounds like the sort of genre given to songs that nobody can quite place.

The second 1975 B-side was an offcut from the Ziggy Stardust sessions, ‘Velvet Goldmine’. Testament to the depth of Bowie’s career, this is another now-classic that went unnoticed at the time. Bouncy, theatrical and fruity, with a brilliant humming-slash-whistling outro that reminds me of Lee Marvin’s ‘Wand’rin Star’. Unlike ‘Wand’rin Star’, however, this is an ode to blowjobs: I had to ravish your capsule, Suck you dry… The song is now so well-respected in the annals of glam that it lent its name to the 1998 movie ‘Velvet Goldmine’, about a fictional glam-rock star.

A bonus for you here, as ‘Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud’ was the B-side to the original 1969 release of ‘Space Oddity’. It’s an epic tale about… something. When I reluctantly admit that I’m not a fully paid up member of the Bowie fanclub, it’s songs like this that have put me off. This single version is quite sparse – just a guitar and some trings – but he re-recorded it for his eponymous second album, with an orchestra, and that version has an appealing grandeur about it. (I’m still not sure what it’s about, though…)