Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath invented heavy metal with Tony Iommi's detuned riffs and Ozzy Osbourne's haunting vocals, spawning a genre that sells 200 million albums annually. Their debut album reached gold status within a year—a pace 30% faster than the typical rival in 1970. Forging the blueprint for bands like Metallica, they remain the foundational force behind 50 years of metal evolution. The 1972 album Volume 4 sold over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone, a figure 25% higher than the average for any predecessor from the same decade.