What can stop your hunger for power?

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

16/02/86 : The Ultimate Sin - Ozzy Osbourne


I remember heavy metal being pretty popular around this time, but we've only met the old troopers this year - Ozzy and Iron Maiden (I guess everyone else was just not quite making the top ten). I'm somehow expecting this to be both terrible and surprisingly enjoyable at the same time.

Well, it's not really my thing but I don't think I'd go as far as to say it's either terrible or surprisingly enjoyable - it's certainly bearable, although I don't think it's going to win any prizes for originality. It's interesting to compare this with Iron Maiden because I actually prefer this (particularly "Shot In The Dark" which is a very cheesy US rawk number), but it's also quite obviously not as skilfully put together. I'm certainly not saying I love it but I'm happy enough to listen to something a bit different - and that's all I've got to say about it really!

We're at #8 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of a nine week run which pleasingly involved a drop down the chart each week. The top five this week were Dire Straits, Phil Collins, Eurythmics, Whitney Houston and A-ha, which is quite the high powered top five and the next highest new entry was a somewhat surprising Nana Mouskouri (#29).

Wikipedia tells us this is his fourth solo album and most of the music was written by Jake E Lee whilst Ozzy was in rehab (hard to imagine, eh?). Amusingly, he told Ozzy he'd written it but he wasn't going to share it until he had a contract sorted out because Sharon robbed him blind on the previous album - Sharon got her own back though by sacking him after the tour. He wasn't alone in departing the band though - the bass player Bob Daisley wrote the lyrics and then departed to be replaced by Gregg Chaisson, who was fired pretty quickly. And his replacement was Phil Soussan who at least made it to the end of the tour before he left, to be replaced by Bob Daisley back for more - I imagine Ozzy is a load of fun to be around, but an absolute nightmare to work with. The critics were pretty middling on the album but it did well commercially, getting to #6 in the US and doing particularly well in Scandinavia - #6 in Norway, #4 in Sweden and #3 in Finland.

"Customers also listened to" Ratt, Dio, Dokken and Judas Priest - not a selection of people I'm very familiar with, I'm afraid. Unlike Ozzy, who I know far more about than I ever imagined thanks to the TV series - regarding this album there's nothing to drag me back here, but I guess it's fine if you like that sort of thing. 

09/02/86 - An OK album, at best
23/02/86 - A very fine album indeed

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