Finished with my woman
'Cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane
Because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things
But nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind
If I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me occupy my brain?
Oh yeah!
I need someone to show me
The things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness
I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh
And you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel
And love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words
Telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late
In the song, “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne uses tone, mood, and hyperbole to express his thoughts and feelings caused by depression. He relates his personal experiences in a matter-of-fact tone of voice but the specific events and thoughts show that the song is about depression. The guitar riff that goes with the song can be misleading, making the audience feel kind of amped like a lot of metal music does, and it’s easy to miss the actual message of the song when people listen to the riff more than the lyrics.
The tone of the words used display kind of a hopeless feeling, as if the person this song is about knows he’s depressed and doesn’t think anything can be done to pull him out of it. This is shown in the lyrics: “All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy,” where the narrator is basically saying that nothing he can think of is helping him with his depression.
He also uses a hyperbole when he says: “Can you help me occupy my brain?” because he’s asking somebody for help with his issues. The exaggeration there is that he’s saying he needs someone to “occupy his brain,” when what he could really mean is that he needs someone to help him with this empty feeling he has. It could also be asking for someone to give him direction in life. Possibly asking someone to help him “feel”, or have feelings.
The general mood throughout the song is hard to detect from the music, but the lyrics put it across as a feeling of hopelessness. The lyrics at the end of the song, “I tell you to enjoy life, I wish I could but it’s too late” show that the narrator of the song has given up trying to lose his depression. He seems to be talking to one person in particular as well, almost like the whole song was him telling someone else about his state of mind in order to get it off his chest. It’s hard to tell if this song was based on one of Ozzy Osbourne’s personal experiences, but I wouldn’t be surprised considering his history with all the drugs and craziness. Where there are highs there’s also lows, and this song could have been written to describe one of the low times in Ozzy’s life.
