In an election year when violence, ignorance, and hate have become viable political platforms, this beautiful and devastating new national anthem might be more than America deserves. So when he sings, “I’ve been going through changes,” and when he testifies, “It hurts so bad!” he’s speaking to something greater than himself.
“Changes” is powerful as a single, but especially on an album that opens with a completely heartfelt and utterly unironic version of “God Bless America.” It sounds like Bradley is taking stock of the country at this very moment and trying to figure out why something he loves so dearly and unreservedly could turn so ugly. He makes it sound as big as all of America, his vocals so commanding, so authoritative, so majestic that he explodes the notion that “Changes” is only about losing a lover. With its gently thrumming organ, a group of sympathetic horns, and a guitar riff that echoes Tommy Iommi’s original piano theme, Bradley doesn’t just make the song sound natural in this setting. It’s almost like he’s been saving the song for the right moment. But he’s just now making it the centerpiece and title track to his third album, due in April. Geezer and me were learning, it was a challenge.Charles Bradley got ahold of the song in 2013, making it the A-side to a 7" and featuring it in live shows. It sounded really weird I couldn’t believe it was us. And that was it, we decided to record it. We got the Mellotron in and Geezer started playing that, like an accompaniment, an orchestral thing. “I’d never played the piano before and I started learning it right there and then … I came up with ‘Changes.’ Ozzy came in and said, ‘Oh I like that’ and started singing to it. In his 2011 autobiography Iron Man, Iommi gave his side of the story about how the band composed the song. I thought that was brilliant from moment the we recorded it.” With ‘Changes,’ Tony just sat down at the piano and came up with this beautiful riff, I hummed a melody over the top, and Geezer wrote these heartbreaking lyrics about the breakup Bill was going through with his wife at the time. But there was a lot more to us than that – especially when we started making an effort to get away from all that black magic shit. “When a lot of people hear the name ‘Black Sabbath’ all they think of is the heavy stuff. That’s how we ended up doing songs like ‘Changes,’ which didn’t sound like anything we’d ever done before.” If other people happened to like what we were doing, that was just a bonus. The Lyrics Were Composed By Bassist Geezer Butler, And Vocalist Ozzy. “We wanted to impress ourselves before we impressed anyone else. Changes Is A Ballad Inspired Mainly By Bill Wards Ongoing Breakup With His First Wife. In his 2010 autobiography I Am Ozzy, Osbourne explained how a guy who later became known for biting the heads off of flying animals came up with a heartfelt song like this one. Appropriately credited to all four Black Sabbath members – vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward – the song dealt with emotional changes, not the hormonal ones that Big Mouth centers around.
It’s likely that most younger viewers, while they may think the melody sounds familiar, don’t realize that this song was originally a slow, piano-based piece about the pain of marital breakup. For several years, the chorus from “Changes,” performed by the late soul artist Charles Bradley, has been the intro music to the Netflix animated comedy Big Mouth, about a group of tweens dealing with puberty.
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