Ozzy Osbourne Has His First Top 10 Hit In 30 Years, Setting New Record
Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding is enjoying a dominant first week on the charts. It’s the #1 album in the country, with the second biggest debut week of the year after Taylor Swift’s Lover. All of its 17 tracks are on the Hot 100 singles chart, four of them in the top 10. And one of those, “Take What You Want,” has resulted in a new Billboard record being set — not by Posty but by Ozzy Osbourne, who features on the track alongside Travis Scott.
“Take What You Want” debuts at #8 on this week’s Hot 100. As Billboard points out, it’s Osbourne’s first song in the top 10 since 1989, when his Lita Ford duet “Close My Eyes Forever” also hit #8. (Notably, neither Post Malone nor Travis Scott was born at the time.) The 30 years and three months between those hits represents the longest stretch ever between top 10 hits, surpassing the 30 years and two months between Dobie Gray’s own “Drift Away” in 1973 and his appearance on Uncle Kracker’s cover of the same song in 2003. The Ozzman cometh back!
Billboard’s report indicates that Paul McCartney still holds the record for longest gap between top 10 hits as a lead artist, but that claim is tenuous. McCartney went 29 years and two weeks between 1986’s “Spies Like Us” and 2015’s “FourFiveSeconds” with Rihanna and Kanye West. Although Rih, Ye, and Macca were credited as co-leads on “FourFiveSeconds,” his contributions to the song aren’t really tantamount to a lead performance. He doesn’t sing any lead vocals on the song, and last year he described the writing process as such: “I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim on his computer. I’m thinking, are we ever gonna get around to writing?! But it turns out he was writing. That’s his muse. He was listening to this riff I was doing and obviously he knew in his mind that he could use that, so he took it, sped it up and then somehow he got Rihanna to sing on it.”
Anyway, back to Ozzy Osbourne. In a new interview with The Sun, the former Black Sabbath singer says he’s finished with a new solo album, a process that began when Post Malone asked him to sing on “Take What You Want.” Quoth Osbourne, “I’d never even heard of this kid. He wanted me to sing on his song ‘Take What You Want,’ so I did and then one thing led to another. I started recording a new album with Post Malone’s producer Andrew Watt. It’s only nine tracks but it was a catalyst to get me to where I am today.” He says he recorded the album in just four weeks. It’ll be his first solo LP since 2010’s Scream.
Osbourne also says he’s got 15 screws in his spine due to a fall he suffered in January of this year. He says he feared he was dying but his wife, Sharon, and friends such as Elton John helped him get himself back in action: “Elton told me to get off the couch and start walking, which was what I needed, as I couldn’t move off it for months. He was right. Elton is a sweetheart. He has phoned me throughout all this. He was at the house the other day with his two boys. They are great kids. They are such a good family. You would be surprised, when you are feeling miserable you find out who is a friend and who doesn’t give a shit.”
Hear “Take What You Want” below.