Ozzy Osbourne just had one of the greatest final acts in musical history. After years of health problems, he returned to the stage earlier this month for Back to the Beginning, the grandest farewell concert metal could offer. Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Anthrax, and many, many others all dazzled a massive crowd in person and online.
But the highlights were, of course, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, reuniting on stage to run through their hits. Ozzy himself looked blissful at finally being back on stage, and the crowd went bananas as they wrapped things up with a blistering and emotional “Paranoid”.
Osbourne died yesterday, just seventeen days after he took his final bow on stage. The world of music and entertainment at large came together to pay tribute to him. But with an outpouring of emotion comes those eager to capitalize on it for engagement.
Enter one-time Democratic Party candidate Andrew Yang, now the co-chair of the centrist Forward Party. Seeing a bandwagon he could leap aboard, he took to X to pay tribute to Ozzy, “a true American original”.
How do you do, fellow heavy metal enthusiasts!? pic.twitter.com/IIvf78GvLB
— Guy (@GuyIsReborn) July 22, 2025
As you might have noticed, there’s a teeny tiny little problem with this tribute. Osbourne is famously British, is from Birmingham, and speaks with a distinct Brummie accent. Replies were quick to rush in with the mockery and angry Brits decried this statement as “blasphemy!”
Oops
Yang (or someone on his staff) quickly realized they’d made a colossal mistake and rapidly edited and reposted, now stating that Osbourne was “a true original and pioneer.” Mm, sure buddy, I bet you were a huge fan.
RIP Ozzy Osbourne, a true original and pioneer.
— Andrew Yang(@AndrewYang) July 22, 2025
Osbourne himself would have probably laughed at some suited politician making an idiot of himself while trying to praise him, so this is just another example of an out-of-touch politician frantically trying to be down with the kids (the kids in this instance being aging metalheads).
Either way, we’d love to pay tribute to Ozzy and his career, but the man himself did the job better than anyone else could just a few weeks ago at that farewell concert. He was already set to go down in musical history as one of the all-time greats – but his last weeks on Earth and that goodbye cements him as a legend. RIP Ozzy.
