In 1970, Norman Greenbaum’s life changed when his song “Spirit in the Sky” became a hit. The song peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 18, 1970, just four months after it was released as the first single from the singer-songwriter’s debut 1969 album of the same name. It also ranked on Billboard’s year-end list as one of the top songs of 1970.
“Spirit in the Sky” went certified gold, with more than two million copies sold from 1969 to 1970, per The New York Times. It was the only hit of Greenbaum’s career, confirming his status as a “one-hit wonder.”
“Spirit in the Sky” is known for its distorted electric guitar riff, which admittedly took Greenbaum a while to perfect. But the real meat of the song— lyrics filled with religious references—was penned in record time after Greenbaum caught Porter Wagoner singing a gospel song on TV.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, I could do that,’ knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song,” Greenbaum, now 83, told the Times in 2014. “It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes.”
Greenbaum shared the backstory on ‘Spirit in the Sky’
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Greenbaum, who was raised Jewish, revealed that the idea for “Spirit in the Sky” came after he saw a greeting card with those four words on it and became intrigued.
“I just put it in the back of my head,” he said. “Then I happened to be watching Porter Wagoner. He had a TV show, and he did a religious song halfway through the show. …I said to myself, ‘Well, I’ve never written a religious song. I’ve written some oddball songs, but some serious song, I can do that.’ I just sat down, and it all came together.”
“The lyrics came really quick,” he added. “When I started putting the music to that, that took a little more time.“
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Greenbaum noted that he received pushback from record company executives when he first presented the Jesus-themed song to them.
“There was resistance to releasing ‘Spirit in the Sky’ as a single,” the songwriter told the Times. “First of all, it was too long. It’s about four minutes. Plus, it was so weird. Here’s a Jew singing about Jesus with this fuzz box going ‘brrrrrr.’”
It also didn’t sound like anything else on the radio at the time.
“At first the record company said, ‘Gee, they don’t play anything like this on Top 20,’” Greenbaum told Rolling Stone. “But obviously they were wrong. We always knew it was going to be a hit. It just sounded too good.”
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A resurgence in the ‘80s
More than 15 years after its release, “Spirit in the Sky” got a boost when it was featured on the soundtrack to the film Maid to Order. The musical cameo in the Ally Sheedy film led to more movie and advertising deals for everything from Apollo 13 to Toyota commercials.
Greenbaum receives a check each time his song is used. “Because of ‘Spirit in the Sky,’ I don’t have to work,” he said in the 2014 interview.
As for that one-hit wonder label, Greenbaum has said he has no problem with it. “Rather than just a song, it’s become an amazing piece of work,” he once said in an interview published by The Daily Democrat. “When you write songs, you don’t expect them to last almost 50 years and get so much attention.”
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