Jack Osbourne has paid tribute to his Dad Ozzy.
When news broke of Ozzy Osbourne’s death last month, Rod Stewart was one of the first to pay tribute to the late Black Sabbath frontman. “Bye bye Ozzy,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sleep well, my friend. I’ll see you up there – later rather than sooner.”
Since then, Stewart has been taking time each night during his shows to dedicate his 1988 song “Forever Young” to Osbourne. At most recent concerts, however, the singer decided to take his tribute one step further.
In honor of the Prince of Darkness, Stewart debuted an AI-generated video montage of Osbourne in heaven taking selfies with other legendary musicians and artists who have passed away, including: Kurt Cobain, Prince, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Tina Turner, George Michael, Amy Winehouse, Tupac Shakur, XXXTentacion, and more.
According to the Charlotte Observer, concluding his AI tribute and his performance of “Forever Young,” Stewart told the crowd: “Very sad. A lot of those people died ’cause of drugs… I’m still here, though!”
Footage of Stewart’s tribute has since gone viral, and has garnered quite a lot of criticism from fans for both his use of AI and for including controversial artists like Michael Jackson and XXXTentacion in the montage.
“This is the crazies most disrespectful sh*t I ever saw in my LIFE!!!” one person who attended Stewart’s concert in Alpharetta, GA shared on Instagram, adding in the caption: “I went to a Rod Stewart concert last night (lol) and witnessed man made horrors beyond my comprehension.”
“Took my mom to him last week and this made me sick. Crazy weird,” a fan wrote in the comments, while another added: “How about we just dig their corpses up and make them walk around it’s just as ghastly.”
One fan specifically took issue with the use of Prince’s image, writing: “Prince didn’t even want his music on Spotify and changed his name to a Symbol to protect his intellectual property I’m 100% sure he wouldn’t have signed off on Rod Stuart Puppeteering his face for this tacky 💩.”
“I am shocked that no one told Rod that this was a terrible idea!!!” another fan said, while one person commented with a chilling warning: “The really infuriating thing is that a big chunk of society is already totally okay with this stuff. We are in big, big trouble.”
