Jelly Roll Emulates Ozzy Osbourne in This Touching Tribute to His Wife, Bunnie Xo

The desire to write about strong, solid love transcends fickle descriptors like genre or decade, and Jelly Roll emulating Ozzy Osbourne in their touching tributes to their respective wives perfectly exemplifies that fact. Indeed, it doesn’t matter if you’re a heavy metal pioneer or a face-tattooed rapper slash country star: love is love, and that’s well worth writing about.

On his tenth studio album, Beautifully Broken, Jelly Roll takes the listener on a journey through addiction, recovery, and rising success over 14 tracks. Even if you’re not familiar with Jelly Roll as an artist (or a person), you’d only need a few seconds to discover that the penultimate track, “Hey Mama,” is about someone special in Jelly Roll’s life.

And you’d be right—it’s his wife, Bunnie Xo.

Jelly Roll Emulated Ozzy Osbourne For This Tribute To His Wife

Jelly Roll’s “Hey Mama” opens with a phone call between the country star and his wife, Bunnie Xo. The country star and podcaster have been incredibly open about their relationship, inviting their fans to learn more about them both through their connection to the other. “Hey Mama” peeks into Jelly Roll’s life on the road while wishing he was home. Hey, mama, don’t you know that my lonely needs you to hold. And one day, these winds will blow me back in your direction. Hey, mama, wait for me, I’m still out here chasin’ dreams.

But Jelly Roll wasn’t just thinking about Bunnie Xo when he wrote the heartstring-tugging track. He was also thinking about Ozzy Osbourne.

“I’m a huge Ozzy fan,” Jelly Roll revealed to Rolling Stone in 2024. “[“Mama, I’m Coming Home” is one of my favorite Ozzy songs. You know what’s important about [my] song? A lot of times I write from the perspective of where I come from, or from the perspective of who I represent to get [listeners] to look at things differently. This was a glimpse of me getting to write what I’m doing right now. We wrote that at sunrise at a Pilot station. It’s got that old truck stop feeling. I wanted that song to feel like the morning dew when you get off the bus to p*** at 5:15.”

The Country Star Has Shown His Chops On The Rock Classic Before

Ozzy Osbourne released “Mama, I’m Coming Home” in 1991 on his sixth solo studio album, No More Tears. In the liner notes for his 1997 compilation, The Ozzman Cometh, the heavy metal pioneer revealed that “Mama, I’m coming home” was what he always said to his wife, Sharon Osbourne, when he was nearing the end of a tour. The song was partially a road-weary ballad and partially sung from an addict’s perspective. Sharon played a significant role in Ozzy’s road to recovery from his substance abuse—something with which Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo could easily empathize, given Jelly Roll’s own struggles with mental health and addiction.

At the October 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Jelly Roll proved he could sing Ozzy’s music as well as he could take lyrical inspiration from it when he performed “Mama, I’m Coming Home” with Zakk Wylde, who helped co-write the song with Ozzy in the early 1990s.

Jelly Roll’s connection to Ozzy Osbourne’s track is a testament to the fact that the kind of love that makes you want to rush home as fast as possible is more universal than any popular rock, country, or rap track could ever hope to be.

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