Popcorn (instrumental)

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"Popcorn" is a famous early synthpop instrumental. Composer Gershon Kingsley (of Perrey and Kingsley) first recorded it for his 1969 album Music to Moog By. Stan Free rerecorded the instrumental with his band Hot Butter in 1971, which became the first primarily electronic-based piece of music to reach the American popular music charts. The record was one of a rash of Moog synthesizer-based releases that characterized "synth-pop" of the 1960s and 1970s. It has since been covered by various artists, including Aphex Twin, Jean-Michel Jarre (as the Popcorn Orchestra), Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, M&H Band, DJ Fantomas, Gigi D'Agostino, Iranian artist Shadmehr Aghili, Afrosound, the Time Frequency (TTF), The Treble Spankers, the Boomtang Boys, Bass Bumpers (fronted by the Crazy Frog cartoon), Liars, and Japanese electronic artists Denki Groove. It has also been remixed by Hexstatic on the Pick 'n' Mix album. In fact, more than 500 cover versions and remixes of the song exist. ^{[citation needed]} Although some versions of the song, including the Kingsley original, are commonly misattributed to Kraftwerk, they never performed the song. (One version, 6:57 in length, commonly circulates on OpenNap or other file-sharing networks with either Kraftwerk's or Jean-Michel Jarre's name attached; this one is in fact by the M&H Band, released as a 12" single by Arcadia Records in 1987.)

The title refers to the short staccato or sharp popping sound used:

"Popcorn" (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- The "Popcorn" melody.
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Part of the song's fame comes from the rumor that the characteristic main melody was in fact written by a computer program created to compose music ^{[citation needed]}. While the statement seemed credible around the time (the computer's relation with music was still something rather obscure), it can now be assumed that the whole song was created and arranged by Kingsley.

1 Appearances
2 External links

[edit] Appearances

[edit] Games

Popcorn was used as background music in the original CGA version of the classic computer game Digger.
Popcorn was used in the arcade version of the Sega game Pengo, but for the Atari 2600 console version, to avoid royalties, Atari created its own music. A cover version of Popcorn was later used in the shareware Amiga game Martinsoft Pengo.
Popcorn was used in the Commodore 64 game Trollie Wallie, along with two songs by Jean-Michel Jarre.
Popcorn can be heard in Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMIX under the title VOL.4.
Popcorn was used as background music in the first few levels of a Pac-Man clone released in the 1990s for the PC, Pako 2.

[edit] Movies

[edit] Television appearances

You can hear this melody in the famous Russian cartoon series, Nu, pogodi! (Just you wait!), in the episode "On Construction Site" (1976).
Featured in a Tennesse State lottery advertisement.
Featured in an advertisement on the BBC digital channel CBeebies, and the digital channel E4.
Featured in the British young children's TV series Play School in the 1980s.
Popcorn was the theme for the Michigan State Lottery's televised number drawings in the 1980's.
Popcorn was used in a Spanish car commercial for the Renault Clio.
Popcorn was used in an advertisement for lipstick-color types for Boots, with different colours changing on the screen rapidly, in sync with every note in the song.
Popcorn was also used as the theme for "Snipets", a children's educational program that usually lasted 3-5 minutes, and ran during the early 1970's.
Popcorn as background music in Pampers Commercial (USA) in 2001.
Brain plays the song by slapping his cheeks in an episode of Pinky and the Brain.
Popcorn was used as the background music in a video for the Crazy Frog.
Popcorn was used in a show of the Dutch comedian Jochem Myjer.
Popcorn was performed on the harp by Mr. Wick on The Drew Carey Show.
Popcorn was used in the original cut of the Green Jelly video "Cereal Killers."
An excerpt of Popcorn is used in a Portuguese Vodafone commercial.
In the early 1970s, Popcorn was used by RTE, the Irish state broadcaster, as the theme for their greyhound racing programming.
Dr. Demento frequently uses Hot Butter's recording as bumper music along with works by Harry Partch on his show.
Popcorn is used with the O RLY fad at YTMND.
Popcorn was used as a theme music for children math learning programme on Czechoslovak Television. Has been chosen specifically because of its' "computerized" sound.