“Hocus Pocus” by Focus

"Hocus Pocus" opens Moving Waves, the second album by Dutch band Focus, recorded and released in 1971. Keyboardist, flautist and singer Thijs van Leer wrote it with guitarist Jan Akkerman, and Mike Vernon is credited as producer.

Its road to the charts was a long one. An edited single, backed with "Janis", went out across Europe in 1971 and made No. 10 in the Netherlands but charted nowhere else that year. Then Focus played it on The Old Grey Whistle Test late in 1972 and toured British clubs, and by the end of January 1973 it had climbed to No. 20 in the UK; in America it reached No. 9 on the Hot 100. Nearly four decades on, Nike built its "Write the Future" ads for the 2010 World Cup around it, and it charted again in Britain and the Netherlands.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.