To be honest,  there is really only one reason why Spirit In The Sky is today’s song of the day and that’s that it happens to be so very stuck in my head!  I’ve seen the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy a few dozen times and I now not only hear Spirit in the Sky when I close my eyes but I also end up picturing a surly raccoon walking down a hallway with a tree-like creature that repeatedly says, “I am Groot.”

And that’s not a bad thing at all!

Believe it or not, before I sat down to write this post, I actually did some research on the origin of the song.  And, of course, by research I mean that I looked the song up on Wikipedia and read the first half of the article.  Spirit in the Sky was written, recorded, and first released in 1969.  Norman Greenbaum mostly wrote it as a challenge to himself, to see if he, despite knowing nothing about gospel music, could write a gospel song.  As for the song’s distinctive “beep beep” fills, they were the result of a last minute improvisation by guitarist Russell Dashiell.  The end result, of course, was the world’s first psychedelic gospel song.

Finally, before Greenbaum recorded Spirit in The Sky, he apparently had a hit song called The Eggplant That Ate Chicago.

And who knows?  Maybe that song will be featured in the trailer for the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy!

But for now, here is Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky…