Crazy Train
by Ozzy Osbourne
- 136
- BPM
- F# minor
- Key
- 11A
- Camelot
- 46
- Danceability
- 37
- Acousticness
Randy Rhoads wrote the guitar riff that "Crazy Train" is known for, though the credit is disputed. Guitarist Greg Leon, who first took Rhoads's place in Quiet Riot, says he showed Rhoads the riff to Steve Miller's "Swingtown" and suggested speeding it up, and that Rhoads took it to another level. Bassist Bob Daisley dismissed rumors that Rhoads had not created the riff alone. Osbourne, Rhoads and Daisley wrote the song together.
It was Ozzy Osbourne's debut solo single, released in 1980 from his first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. The lyrics deal with the Cold War and the fear of annihilation. The track contains what is described as "evil laughter". On its first release it reached the top 50 in the UK, at number 49. In the US it reached number 6 on the Billboard Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart in 1981.
After Osbourne died in 2025, "Crazy Train" entered the Hot 100 for the first time at number 46, with 9.2 million streams, and later peaked at number 39. That made it his second US top 40 hit as a solo artist after "Mama, I'm Coming Home".
Crazy Train runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in F# minor, Camelot 11A, which shares its notes with A major and mixes cleanly with B minor and C# minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.