I went through a period when I was in eighth and ninth grade where I had messy long hair, a variety of black band t-shirts advertising bands like Iron Maiden and Guns N\u2019 Roses, and a perpetual scowl. This was before I embraced most of my favorite bands of today, like Arcade Fire and Neutral Milk Hotel, but it was also before I saw the value in pop music. I didn\u2019t see the musical value in pop stars like Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, and even less in dance artists and DJs like David Guetta and Deadmau5. I spent most of my music time listening to killer guitar solos and howling metal vocals and deriding things that weren\u2019t hard enough as pop garbage spoon-fed to the mainstream masses.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne More Time\u201d by Daft Punk was one of the first dance tracks I really got into. From there, I started listening to all of Discovery<\/i>, and then Homework <\/i>and Human After All<\/i>. All three albums had something of a different vibe (Homework<\/i>\u2019s street sound, Discovery<\/i>\u2019s slick, funk groove, Human After All<\/i>\u2019s hard rock guitars), but carried the same extreme professionalism and production values. Even though Human After All<\/i> had its detractors, it was still pretty well received, and it seemed like Daft Punk was about to go on a creation spree. They released a remix album for Human After All<\/i> in 2006, followed by a great live album in 2007.<\/p>\n
Then nothing. No word on a new album or singles or anything. Eventually, it came out that Daft Punk would be doing the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy<\/i>. It wasn\u2019t a new studio album, but it was something. Still, after it came out, it didn\u2019t FEEL like a Daft Punk album. It was good, solid score and had some great tracks like \u201cDerezzed\u201d, \u201cSolar Sailor\u201d and \u201cEnd Of Line\u201d, but it felt too much like a film tie-in. The Daft Punk staples weren\u2019t there and all it did for me was make me more excited for something new.<\/p>\n
Enter Random Access Memories<\/i> and \u201cGet Lucky\u201d. Weird viral marketing with Saturday Night Live promos, a teaser at Coachella, and a series of fifteen minute videos called The Collaborators, interviewing artists who worked with Daft Punk for Random Access Memories<\/i>. Dozens of \u201cleaks\u201d that consisted of fifteen second loops recut and remixed into something passing itself off as a Daft Punk track.<\/p>\n
The moment has passed and \u201cGet Lucky\u201d, the first single from the first true Daft Punk album in over eight years, is out. It features guitar work from Nile Rodgers of Chic and vocals from Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D. and production duo The Neptunes. Rodgers absolutely destroys the guitar line, creating one of the funkiest and most danceable guitar hooks in recent memory, while Williams croons his way through the verses, nearly creeping into a falsetto in the chorus.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet Lucky\u201d isn\u2019t the best Daft Punk song ever made. It also doesn\u2019t have much in common with the traditional Daft Punk singles, like \u201cHarder, Better, Faster, Stronger\u201d or \u201cHuman After All\u201d, instead opting more for a sound like Discovery<\/i>\u2019s \u201cFace To Face\u201d. It may be a curious choice for a lead single from an incredibly hyped album, but when it comes down to it, \u201cGet Lucky\u201d is an extremely catchy, danceable track that doesn\u2019t sacrifice artistic integrity. If this is a preview to the \u201cnew\u201d Daft Punk, I can safely say that I\u2019m excited to see what they have in store for the rest of the album.<\/p>\n
Random Access Memories<\/i> comes out May 21st<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I went through a period when I was in eighth and ninth grade where I had messy long hair, a variety of black band...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1556,"featured_media":1951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[53708],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-representing-the-underrepresented"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/files\/2013\/04\/daft-punk-random-access-memories.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wdcvfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}