Month: July 2025

In Memoriam: Ozzy Osbourne

On July 22, 2025, British rock musician “Ozzy” Osbourne died in Jordans, Great Britain, at the age of 76.
 
Ozzy (John Michael) Osbourne was born on December 3, 1948, in Birmingham. After dropping out of school and working several unskilled jobs, he formed a band with Terry Butler, Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward in 1968, which was renamed “Black Sabbath” in 1969. Similar to the bands “Led Zeppelin” and “Deep Purple”, “Black Sabbath” pushed the hard rock of the time into increasingly heavier forms and, since the release of their debut album, has been considered the founders of “heavy metal.” In the 1970s, the band’s heyday, Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals shaped the band’s sound. Due to his drug problems, “Black Sabbath” parted ways with Osbourne in 1979. Osbourne achieved some success as a solo artist in the 1980s
and 1990s and regained popularity in the early 2000s through the MTV reality series “The Osbournes”.
In 1997, “Black Sabbath” reunited and toured several times with different lineups until 2017. The last concert with the original lineup, a benefit concert for a children’s hospice entitled “Back to the Beginning,” took place in Birmingham on July 5, 2025. Seventeen days after the concert, Ozzy Osbourne died at the age of 76.
 

The video features Ozzy Osbourne performing the song “Dreamer,” which he wrote in 2000. Osbourne described the song, which was released as a single from the 2002 studio album “Down to Earth,” as his favorite song.

In Memoriam: Connie Francis

On July 16, 2025, the American pop and hit singer Connie Francis passed away in Broward Health North, Florida, at the age of 87.
 
Connie Francis (Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero) was born on December 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. As a child, she performed at local festivals and talent shows as a singer and accordion player and was a cast member of the NBC entertainment program “Startime Kids” from 1951 to 1955. After several unsuccessful recording sessions, she achieved a hit in 1958, almost by chance, with the song “Who’s Sorry Now?”, which sold more than a million copies within a few weeks. Through foreign-language cover versions of her own hits, Connie Francis became an international pop music star in the 1960s. In addition to her recordings, she was a sought-after live artist in the showplaces of Las Vegas and New York
City and performed in important international concert halls such as the London Palladium and the Olympia in Paris. While Connie Francis’s singles focused almost exclusively on commercialism and followed current trends of the time such as rock ‘n’ roll, twist, and the girl group sound, her albums presented her work in a wide variety of styles, including rhythm and blues, vocal jazz, country music, musical melodies, children’s songs, sacred music, traditional songs from various ethnic groups, as well as film soundtracks and portraits of well-known composers such as Burt Bacharach. With a few brief interruptions, Connie Francis was active on stage until the 2010s. She ended her stage career in 2017 with the publication of her autobiography.
 

The video shows Connie Francis performing one of her biggest hits, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” during an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on June 12, 1960.

New Stationery

The images on postal stationery, i.e. on postcards and envelopes with imprinted stamps, often contain important thematic information that can not be found on stamps. The list of new issues in the members-only-section is updated regularly.
 


26.1.25: Russia (2025)
3.2.25: Romania (2024) / Russia (2025)
22.3.25: North Korea
5.5.25: Russia
5.7.25: Germany / Russia

New Stationery 2024 (members only)   New Stationery 2025 (members only)
 
Checklists / Catalogs: Postal stationery on music (members only)

New Stamps 2024

Every year, numerous new stamps are issued on the theme of music. The list of new issues published in the members-only-section of our website is updated several times per month.
 

5.4.25: Liberia / Serbia
15.4.25: Bosnia-Herzegovina / Guinea / Latvia / Lithuania / Thailand
28.4.25: Guinea-Bissau / Liberia / Sierra Leone
30.5.25: Central African Republic / Djibouti / Guinea / Guinea-Bissau / Sierra Leone
5.7.25: Central African Republic / France / Guinea / Sierra Leone

Stamps Europe (members only)  Stamps Overseas (members only)
 
Planned issues 2025 (members only)

Stamp of the Month: July 2025

Erik Satie


Bosnia-Herzegovina
Serbian Republic 9.12.2016
The French composer and pianist Erik Satie was born on May 17, 1866, in Honfleur. He died on July 1, 1925, in Paris. July 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of his death.
 
Satie received his first music lessons at the age of eight from the organist and choirmaster of the church in Honfleur. His father’s second wife, a concert pianist, composer, and music teacher, recognized his talent and enrolled him in 1879 at the Paris Conservatoire, but Satie dropped out after two and a half years. He began composing in 1884. His first pieces were published by his father’s publishing house. In 1887, he moved to the Parisian artists’ district of Montmartre, where he found a job as a pianist at the cabaret Le Chat Noir. In 1905, he resumed his music studies with Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel at the Schola Cantorum. Satie first gained notoriety thanks to his fellow musicians Claude Debussy and
Maurice Ravel, who performed his pieces in 1911. He gained the attention of the Parisian music world in 1917 with the premiere of his ballet “Parade,” created in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and the Diaghilev troupe. He later received further recognition from the young composers of the Groupe des Six, which included Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.
With his work, Satie influenced new music, jazz, and popular music alike. Key characteristics of his music are the simplicity, clarity, brevity, and straightforwardness, which make Satie a pioneer of minimal music. True to his conviction that the composer has no right to unnecessarily take up his listeners’ time, Satie developed his idea of ​​background music even before the introduction of radio.
Today, Satie’s “Gymnopédies” for solo piano are particularly well known; they are very popular with piano students because of their simplicity.

France 11.4.1992