Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky (1970)

We had this album at home when I was a kid and I listened to it a lot. This is widely known as one of the most popular and best-selling "one-hit wonders" of all time. A fellow Masshole, Greenbaum was born in Malden, MA and spent a couple years at Boston University before dropping out and going to L.A. to pursue a career in music. An observant Jew, he admittedly wrote this as a folk song but paired up with a producer who was pretty extravagant with the synths, gospel backup singers, and doubling Greenbaum's vocal, he wanted something to kick it up a notch, and by his own admission, "I had to use something, so I used Christianity." In 1967, as a member of Dr. Wests's Medicine Show and Junk Band, he wrote, performed on, and had a novelty hit with a song called "The Eggpant That Ate Chicago" which was later re-released on Dr. Demento Presents: The Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume III: The 1960s in 1985.

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