“Paranoid” is a song by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released in 1970 off the band’s second studio album Paranoid (1970). It is the first single from the album, while the B-side is the song “The Wizard“. It reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart and number 61 on the US Billboard Hot 100.[1]
“Paranoid” was the first Black Sabbath single release, coming six months after their self-titled debut was released. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler (from Guitar World magazine, March 2004):
A lot of the Paranoid album was written around the time of our first album, Black Sabbath. We recorded the whole thing in about 2 or 3 days, live in the studio. The song “Paranoid” was written as an afterthought. We basically needed a 3 minute filler for the album, and Tony came up with the riff. I quickly did the lyrics, and Ozzy was reading them as he was singing.[5]
The song is an E pentatonic and only uses a “root/5th” diad as chords. The guitar solo is a dry signal on the left channel, which is patched through a ring modulator and routed to the right channel; this effect was used again on the song 1978 “Johnny Blade”.
According to extant lyric sheets, “Paranoid” was at one time titled “The Paranoid.”[6]
“Paranoid” eventually became the name of the album, and somewhat unusually, the word paranoid is never mentioned in the lyrics. Originally the band had wanted to call the album War Pigs after the song of the same name, but the record company persuaded them to use “Paranoid” instead because it was less offensive.[7]
“Paranoid” drew controversy for apparently encouraging suicide, much like the song “Suicide Solution“. Particularly, the lyric “I tell you to enjoy life” was misheard as “I tell you to end your life”.[8]
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Paranoid (Black Sabbath song), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
