Widely credited with establishing the heavy metal music genre, Black Sabbath released their first two albums in 1970, Black Sabbath and Paranoid, and the success of those albums signaled a paradigm shift in rock music, propelling the band to international fame. Although having a self-perception of being a “heavy underground” band, Black Sabbath would go on to sell more than 75 million albums worldwide and be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. This essay examines lyrical narratives in a sample of hit songs on Black Sabbath and Paranoid to gain a better understanding of why the band’s songs resonated with listeners. An examination of the lyrical narratives in Black Sabbath’s earliest hit songs provides a perspective from which the band’s lyrical narratives can be seen as often containing the basic components of Greek tragedy – tragic situation, tragic result, tragic hero, and nemesis – a recurring pattern that may have served a cathartic function for listeners. Similar to Greek tragedies, the sampled Black Sabbath lyrical narratives involve stories of intense human suffering, often under extraordinary conditions, capable of eliciting emotional responses from audiences. By hearing lyrical narratives about the intense suffering experienced by individuals not unlike themselves, listeners are able to participate vicariously in the heroes’ fear, pain, and grief. Thus, just as Aristotle believed Greek tragedies produced a catharsis – a purgation of negative emotions – in viewers, the essay’s author contends that Black Sabbath’s lyrical narratives have the potential to serve a therapeutic function for listeners.
While never previously presented at a conference, this essay was published in 2017 by Metal Music Studies, the bi-annual, peer-reviewed publication of the International Society for Metal Music Studies and the only academic journal exclusively devoted to the study of heavy metal music.
About the presenterBrett A. Barnett
Dr. Brett A. Barnett is Professor of Communication at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. He teaches communication law, civil discourse, and media production courses, and his research interests include First Amendment law, communication ethics, Internet speech, the rhetoric of hate groups and other extremists, as well as the rhetorical nature of song narratives.