‘I was working as a cook when it went to No 1’: how Norman Greenbaum made Spirit in the Sky

‘My label said a four-minute single with lyrics about Jesus would never get played on radio. But, in 1969, the song sold two million copies. It’s now been No 1 in three different decades’Spirit in the Sky started as an old blues riff I’d been playing since my college days in Boston, but I didn’t know what to do with it. After I moved to LA, a guy I knew came up with a way of putting a fuzzbox inside my Fender Telecaster, which created the distinctive sound on Spirit in the Sky.I’d come across a greeting card with a picture of some Native Americans praying to the “spirit in the sky”

I can’t stop watching videos of people discovering Beds Are Burning by Midnight Oil. Send help

Oh the pleasant pain of waiting impatiently for someone to understand the point! Oh the power of dramatic irony; the smug joy of knowing something they don’t.Oh how I wallowed in these feelings and more, when YouTube sucked me into a genre I had previously known nothing about: First Time Hearing videos, where people film themselves watching the music video of a song they’ve never heard before and grace viewers with their impromptu reactions, thoughts and facial expressions.Even before noticing the six-figures-plus viewing counts and the apparently endless number of people vying to deliver more, I instantly clocked all the trappings of the very best attention economy traps. You know: the immediate, certain knowledge that – despite your best intentions, growing hunger, thirst and backpain; despite the increasingly urgent pleas of your neglected children – you’re just going to slump there swiping your finger for hours until your higher brain finally kicks in.The first one my algorithm mugged me with was from US rapper Black Pegasus, who told us he was listening for the first time to Tim Minchin’s song Prejudice

‘London could 100% compete with Cannes’: Aids charity UK gala debut honours Tracey Emin

It’s recognised for its pomp, the celebrity supporters and the fabulously glamorous locations, but for the man behind the amfAR gala, an A-list charity roadshow that rolled into London for the first time this weekend, the event is deeply personal.AmfAR – the American Foundation for Aids Research – is a nonprofit group that emerged in the 1980s to support research into HIV and Aids.“I’m an HIV-positive man. I’m lucky to be alive because of organisations like amfAR,” the foundation’s incoming CEO, Kyle Clifford, said.“I had an Aids diagnosis, and nobody in my life knew that until recently, including my family

Champagne, celebs and artefacts: British Museum hosts first lavish ‘pink ball’ fundraiser

There will be champagne, of course, and dancing, fine Indian food served alongside the Parthenon marbles and cocktails mixed in front of the Renaissance treasures of the Waddesdon bequest. And everywhere – from the lights illuminating the Greek revival architecture, to the carpet on which guests arrive, to the glamorous outfits they are requested to wear – a very particular shade of pink.When the British Museum throws open its doors on Saturday evening for its first “pink ball”, it will not only be hosting an enormous and lavish party, but also inaugurating what its director, Nicholas Cullinan, has called a “flagship national event” that he hopes will become as important to his institution’s finances as it will to the London elite’s social calendar.Eight hundred invited guests have each paid £2,000 to party alongside some of the world’s most sensational artefacts and a roll call of bigwigs from the worlds of fashion, art and culture: Naomi Campbell and Alexa Chung, Miuccia Prada and Manolo Blahnik, Sir Steve McQueen and Sir Grayson Perry and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.As well as glitz, however, there will be brass

My cultural awakening: The Specials helped me to stop fixating on death

My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness

From After the Hunt to the Last Dinner Party: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

After the HuntOut nowJulia Roberts stars in the latest from Challengers director Luca Guadagnino: a cancel-culture thriller set in the aftermath of an accusation of sexual assault on a college campus. She plays a philosophy professor at Yale, whose colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) claims he is innocent of the charges against him.FrankensteinOut nowYears in the making, decades in the dreaming, Guillermo del Toro’s splendidly visceral take on one of literature’s true greats, starring Oscar Isaac as the eponymous scientist and an unrecognisable Jacob Elordi, asthe Creature, is long and messy and brilliant. It deserves to be seen on the big screen (though a Netflix release is following hot on the heels of this cinema release if you do miss it).SunlightOut nowComedian Nina Conti makes her directing debut with a deliciously dark road trip comedy that isn’t for the faint of heart