Paranoid

Black Sabbath recorded much of their second album around the time their self-titled debut came out, capturing the whole thing live in the studio in about two or three days. Among the tracks was "Paranoid", written at the last minute because the band needed a three-minute filler. Tony Iommi came up with the riff, Geezer Butler quickly wrote the lyrics, and Ozzy Osbourne sang them while reading them for the first time. Early lyric sheets show the song was once titled "The Paranoid".

Released in 1970 as the first single from the album, with "The Wizard" on the B-side, it reached number 4 on the UK singles chart and number 61 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It was the band's first song to chart in both countries. The album itself had been intended to carry the title War Pigs, but the record company pushed for Paranoid instead, finding it less offensive.

The song uses power chords over an E minor pentatonic, and its guitar solo runs a dry signal through the left channel while a ring modulator feeds the right, an effect Iommi returned to on 1978's "Johnny Blade". The lyrics caused controversy when a line about telling the listener to enjoy life was misheard as an instruction to end life, leading to accusations that the song encouraged suicide, much like Osbourne's later solo song "Suicide Solution".