Daily Jam - No More Tears

Up until just a few years ago (i.e. when I had kids), I listened to music to fall asleep on most nights, be it by radio, or cassette, or CD, or MP3. Sometimes I’d listen via headphones, and sometimes I’d let the stereo just fill the room with songs (my wife was very cool about this). It was in grade school that I started sleeping to music, and being that I didn’t have the largest music collection at the time, I spent most nights switching the dial back and forth between the only two radio stations that kids in Midland, Texas really listened to, the Top 40 jams of FOXY 106 or the classic and (kind of) current hard rock of KBAT. That’s when I remember hearing Ozzy Osbourne’s “No More Tears” for the first time in seventh grade.

The bass line begins alone, followed by an onset of precise studio drums and a dramatic chorus of synthesized strings. And then Zakk Wylde’s slinking, shredding guitar licks come into play before it all drops off, leaving the rhythm section on its own, the groundwork set for Ozzy’s unmistakable vocals to kick in. I was transfixed, late in the evening, under my sheets, an old Sony Walkman in my hands with those wiry, crappy headphones pressed against my ears. I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever heard.

To be completely honest, I still do.

“No More Tears,” both the song and the album, sneaked its way into the cultural lexicon just a couple of months before Nirvana broke, and the alt-rock/punk rock revolution began in earnest, changing the musical and pop cultural soundscape, if not for good, then at least for the foreseeable future at the time back in the early 90’s. Because of this, the pop metal song is almost like a time capsule, capturing a particular sound from 33 years ago, and preserving it in a figurative amber shell, unaltered and unscathed. It is forever of its time and of its era, blasting through the headphones of my 12-year old self back in 1991. And I still love it.

“It’s just a hand in the bush…in the bush…in the bush…in the bush…”