One of the most famous classic rock songs about an animal is Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World.” The song is known for the lyric “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.” But it almost was written about a prophet ...

Isaac Watts’s 1719 paraphrase of Psalm 98 became a Christmas classic when it was set to music by Lowell Mason—the “father of American hymnody”—and it is now one of the most popular Christmas hymns in ...