A landmark in music history, Popcorn was the first electronic hit single – and, arguably, a forerunner of disco and synth-pop. I first heard it when it was a novelty hit for Hot Butter in 1972.
I had literally no idea until five minutes ago that it was in fact a cover version of a 1969 tune, featured on Top of the Pops accompanied by footage of what you might charitably call “experimental dancing” by a confused audience.
It was composed and recorded by Gershon Kingsley for his landmark electronic album Music To Moog By, which most of us have probably never heard of but is doubtless a prized artefact in the collections of both David Ball and Richard Norris.
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Hot Butter, who re-recorded the hit version in 1972, is the alias of Stan Free, a 1960s session musician whose wide range of credits stretched from Arlo Guthrie and John Denver to The Monkees, and a few failed synth singles under his own name.
He then joined Gershon’s new synth collective, First Moog Quartet, who played this song – Popcorn – as their encore. It invariably received a rave response from audiences, encouraging Free (who may or may not have played on Gershon’s original version) to record his own version and put it out as a single.
This is the Gershon Kingsley version from 1969, with the comedy dancing. And this is the First Moog Quartet version released in 1971, which is much closer to the Hot Butter hit. Not to be confused with the best version of all, by Aphex Twin.
For the Popcorn completist there are at least 75 other recorded versions, which someone has gone to the trouble of collating right here.