Paranoid

IF you play video games you’ll perhaps have heard it on Guitar Hero 3, or Freestyle BMX 2. Enjoy films? It’s shown up in everything from Dazed And Confused to Suicide Squad, even the Angry Birds Movie. If you’re either of a certain age or a fan of archival British pop shows, you may even have witnessed its appearance on Top Of The Pops, and marvelled at a long-haired band at sea within a bopping studio audience, a hard-rocking albums outfit, quite unused to this kind of thing.

Such was and remains the peculiar reach of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, two and a bit minutes which helped unlock new worlds for the band: the singles charts, television, instant recognition. Pedants have suggested the song doesn’t stand up to clinical evaluation, but the power of the music – a choppy riff, a simple vocal melody, an ancient-sounding guitar solo – remains undeniable.

During its 50 years of service so far, it’s been misheard (during the mid-1980s “satanic panic”, concerned parents heard its lyric to be , not ), extensively covered (by, to name a few notables, Mötley Crüe, Ministry and Weezer) and, though unrepresentative of their epic, doomy riffing, widely adored by fans. “We played it on the last Sabbath tour,” guitarist Tony Iommi tellsdown the line from his Midlands home. “It’s still very popular.”