1972 · Behind the Songs
No guitars, no thunder — just a piano, a mellotron and a breaking heart.
Nothing about “Changes” sounds like Black Sabbath — and that was the point. Released on Vol. 4 in 1972, it features no guitar at all: just piano, mellotron strings and Ozzy Osbourne’s voice, exposed and aching. For a band famous for inventing heavy metal, it was a startling left turn into tenderness.
The lyric, by bassist Geezer Butler, traces a relationship falling apart — the small shifts in feeling that add up to an ending. Osbourne sings it without his usual snarl, and the vulnerability is disarming. Tony Iommi, the band’s riff lord, plays piano here instead of guitar, and the restraint makes every note count.
Vol. 4 was recorded in Los Angeles in 1972, a chaotic session the band has described candidly in later years, and “Changes” stands apart from the album’s heavier material like “Supernaut” and “Snowblind.” It was never a single in its original form, but it became one of Sabbath’s most covered songs — most famously as a 2003 duet between Ozzy and his daughter Kelly Osbourne, which introduced the ballad to a new generation.
“Changes” endures because it revealed something the riffs had hidden: that underneath the doom, Black Sabbath could write a melody as direct as anyone’s. It’s the band’s gentlest song — and, in its own way, one of its bravest.
What to listen for: the space. Notice how little is happening — piano, voice, strings — and how much it conveys. Listen for Osbourne’s phrasing, unadorned and sincere, and for the mellotron’s soft swell underneath, which gives the track its dreamlike ache. Then put on “Supernaut” right after, and marvel that the same four people made both.