Country Girl - 2021 Remaster

Wait, is this Black Sabbath, the metal trailblazers famous for "War Pigs" and "Iron Man," singing about falling in love with a country girl and her morning sunshine? It is indeed. "Country Girl" is part of Mob Rules, the second album the group recorded with Ronnie James Dio, who was a lot more likely to write a lovey-dovey lyric than his predecessor, Ozzy Osbourne. His bandmates put up resistance, but decided to go with it. "'Country Girl' was one that did cause a bit of a problem," guitarist Tony Iommi said in a Songfacts interview. "We started playing the riff and wrote the whole thing, and then Ronnie sang this melody about a country girl. I thought, That's a weird thing to sing about. Geezer [Butler] and I didn't agree with it, and Ronnie went, 'What's wrong with it?' It sounded a bit odd, really, him singing about a country girl!"

The lyric is atypical, but the guitar riff is distinctly Sabbath. Most of their songs started with Tony Iommi playing riff after riff until his bandmates stopped him down when they heard one they liked. He could keep playing them, and didn't always know which ones were good.