S is for Spirit in the Sky

Spirit In The Sky makes several religious references to Jesus in the lyrics, although Norman Greenbaum (who wrote the song) is Jewish. Of course, so was Jesus...

In a 2006 interview with the New York Times, Greenbaum told a reporter he was inspired to write the song after watching someone singing a gospel song on TV. Greenbaum said: "I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes." The resulting sound was an "oddly compelling" combination of gospel and hard rock music