What’s up with that? Ozzy seems to be describing severe depression throughout the song.
The song is about the depression and other mental health issues that someone who is suffering from paranoia experiences, not so much about the paranoia itself.
Am a huge fan of them. Here is a classic video of them playing it. It’s one of my favorite music videos. They also look healthier in this one vs. some of their later videos, where drugs had become more of an influence on them, unfortunately.
When Beavis and Butthead watched an early Black Sabbath video of “Paranoid”, one of them remarked that the singer looked like Ozzy, only younger. “Maybe it’s his son?”
I heard an interview with Geezer who was explaining that the term “paranoid” is just one that stoners were using a lot, so they called the song Paranoid.
Sabbath’s main lyricist Geezer Butler explained: “Basically, it’s just about depression, because I didn’t really know the difference between depression and paranoia. It’s a drug thing; when you’re smoking a joint you get totally paranoid about people, you can’t relate to people. There’s that crossover between the paranoia you get when you’re smoking dope and the depression afterwards.”
On the other hand, The Kinks’ “Destroyer” is about paranoia; not a small warship.
Depression is a relatively common feature in multiple other mental disorders, including paranoia. Distinguishing between paranoid depression and depressed paranoia sounds tricky.
I think it was “maybe Ozzy’s this guy’s grandpa.”
For many years I thought the last lines of the song went:
I tell you to end your life
I wish I could but it’s too late
Which I thought was extremely dark, and also, made me wonder “how could it be too late for the song character to end his life?
It was only fairly recently I learned it was “enjoy life”, not “end your life”.
I’ve always heard the last two lines of the song as:
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could ???peremulate??
I just figured that peremulate was some kind of Britishism.
I also just realized that the word Paranoia does not actually appear in the song.
There’s a great version of the song by the Dickies over in the Cover Songs thread…