The year music lost the light: Ozzy Osbourne, Zubeen Garg and the quiet after

Some years are remembered for breakthroughs. Others for disasters. 2025 was a tough year, one that saw natural and man-made disasters in equal doses—ranging from landslides to floods to military escalations to plane crashes. Another tragedy that struck music lovers was the death of two music titans: Ozzy Osbourne and Zubeen Garg. This year will be remembered for the sudden quiet left behind by the two voices that once made the world louder, braver, and more honest.

Even though they differed in geographies,

languages, and musical traditions, Ozzy and Zubeen did the same essential thing: they let people feel deeply—to rage, to hope, and to belong. Listeners across generations and social classes found a sense of belonging and solace in their songs. Their deaths did not just mark the end of two careers. They marked the loss of light—cultural, emotional, and generational.

Ozzy did not polish rock music; he weaponised it. With Black Sabbath and his illustrious solo career, he dragged fear, darkness, and working-class anger into the mainstream. With Ozzy, heavy metal did not emerge as a genre; it arrived as a confrontation. Over five decades in metal and a life with equal doses of fame and notoriety, discipline to music and decadence, ranging from substance abuse to domestic violence, Ozzy’s voice was never about technical perfection. It was about presence. About staring straight into the chaos of the modern world and refusing to flinch. Addiction, illness, controversy, self-destruction—none of it disqualified him. If anything, it made him more real.

For his legions of fans who run in the millions, Ozzy was the artist who told them it was okay to be broken. That music could be ugly, loud, and still honest. His death closes the book on the last true pioneer of heavy metal—not a curator, not a revivalist, but an originator. Metal did not just lose its most lunatic frontman. It lost its most authentic rebel.

Zubeen Garg, or Zubeen Da as he was fondly called, was not simply a musician. He was an institution. A cult figure. A cultural icon. Some have dubbed his death Assam’s biggest tragedy of the century. In Assam and across the Northeast, his voice carried identity, resistance, grief, and pride—often all at once.

His music came at a time when Assam was navigating a challenging phase, marred by political turbulence, insurgency, and military operations. Amidst all the chaos, in 1992, came a 20-year-old singer whose debut album took the state by storm and, over the next three decades, rewrote the rules of music, entertainment, and films, altering Assam’s cultural landscape—one song, one film, one show, one appearance at a time. He wrote and sang about love, heartbreak, politics, and everything in between.

While the Indian mainstream chased formulas, Zubeen stayed rooted. Folk, rock, protest music, cinema—he moved between them without dilution. His songs spoke of land, language, loss, injustice, and dignity. He sang for people who were rarely heard and never marketed to.

What made Zubeen exceptional was not reach, but relevance. He mattered locally in a way few artists ever do. He was not consumed as content; he lived as culture. He belonged to everyone. Everyone belonged to him. From Bihu functions to music concerts to flood relief to protests, he was everywhere. He was omnipresent. With his passing, Assam did not just lose a star. It lost its loudest conscience.

Ozzy and Zubeen shared little on the surface—neither geography nor genre nor audience. But strip it down, and the truth is blunt: both made music that refused to be convenient. They stood outside systems. They disturbed comfort. They carried communities on their backs and paid the price in health, controversy, and exhaustion. Neither was replaceable because neither was manufactured. In an era dominated by algorithms, virality, disposable hits, and one-hit wonders, their deaths feel especially brutal. They are a reminder of what music once was—dangerous, personal, and anchored in lived experience.

This year, the lights went out quietly.