Of all the people to be easily disturbed, frightened, or creeped out, one wouldn’t imagine someone like Ozzy Osbourne, self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness and a man who bit the head off a bat and two doves, would be at the top of the list. How could someone out-shock one of the pioneers of shock rock? Tommy Lee and the rest of the Mötley Crüe found out the hard way just how difficult a task weirding Ozzy out really was.
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Yet, strangely enough, the musicians who would give Osbourne the heebie jeebies were Swedish pop-rockers The Cardigans. Better known as the band behind the earworm of all earworms, “Lovefool”. “Love me, love me, say that you love me / fool me, fool me, go on and fool me / I don’t care ‘bout anything but you.” (You’re welcome.)
However, it wasn’t the sheer infectiousness of “Lovefool” that made The Cardigans so creepy to Ozzy Osbourne. It was actually a song of his own, “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, which is one of four Ozzy and Black Sabbath covers The Cardigans have recorded. The title track of Black Sabbath’s fifth studio album appeared on the band’s 1994 debut, Emmerdale, named after the British television soap opera.
Why The Cardigans Creeped Out Ozzy Osbourne
Speaking to NME in 2018, The Cardigans frontwoman Nina Persson recalled Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne attending one of her shows in Los Angeles in the 1990s. “[Ozzy] brought his whole family—Kelly, Jack, and Sharon—backstage as guests. He was into it. He said our cover was the creepiest thing he ever heard. High praise from him!” And indeed, that’s what Persson was after, telling The Guardian in 2026 that the juxtaposition of a feminine voice singing a hypermasculine song is “wonderfully creepy.”
The cheery instrumentation and Persson’s feather-light vocals do elevate “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” into a whole new dimension of strangeness. The Prince of Darkness hollering about how “dreams turn to nightmares” and “Heaven turns to Hell” is one thing. But hearing the words, “The people who have crippled you, you want to see them burn / The gates of life have closed on you, and there’s just no return,” in Persson’s voice makes it sound downright paranormal, like a possessed doll.
Although a far cry from their dancey smash hit “Lovefool”, The Cardigans’ cover of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” is an incredible take on a classic heavy metal track. When talking to NME about other ways she tried to embody the Prince of Darkness, Persson said, “When I was recording the Gran Turismo record, we were in a house in the countryside. I sat in my own room in the attic recording vocals. I found a dead bat [and] kept it and put it up in front of my desk while I was working. I’d sing to it.”
Of course, that embodiment only went so far. “I didn’t bite the head off it, sadly,” Persson clarified.
Photo by Gus Stewart/Redferns
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