Daft Punk

About

Daft Punk were a French electronic music duo composed of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. The group has gained a cult following on the Internet, with many of their hit songs commonly used in remix videos on YouTube.

History

Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met in 1987 while they were enrolled as students at the Lycée Carnot secondary school in Paris, France. In 1994, the duo released their debut single "The New Wave" (shown below, left). In 1995, the single "Da Funk/Musique" was released (shown below, right), which became their first commercially successful track peaking at #1 on Billboard's "US Hot Dance Club Songs" chart.^[1]

In January of 1997, Daft Punk released their first album Homework, which included the hit tracks "Revolution 909", "Da Funk", "Burnin'" and "Alive." In March of 2001, Daft Punk released their second album Discovery, including the hits "One More Time", "Aerodynamic", "Digital Love" and "Something About Us." On December 1st, 2003, Daft Punk released the feature-length Japanese-French animated musical film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (shown below), which told the story of the kidnapping and rescue of an alien pop band.

In March of 2005, the duo released the album Human After All, which included the notable tracks "Technologic" ,"Human After All", "The Prime Time of Your Life" and "Robot Rock." On April 4, 2006, Daft Punk released Musique Vol. I which included notable tracks from previous albums and "Musique", a track that was previously only available on the original version of the single "Da Funk/Musique". A special edition also included the music video for "The Prime Time of Your Life" and "Robot Rock (Maximum Overdrive)". On December 3rd, 2010, the soundtrack for the science fiction film Tron: Legacy was released, which was scored entirely by Daft Punk.

"Random Access Memories" controversies

On April 22, 2013, Garry's Mod and Source Filmmaker animator EthioMod released a satirical video titled "PSA: Cure Bad Music", which poked fun at the Daft Punk fanbase for their over-the-top reactions towards the announcement of Random Access Memories.

On May 17, 2013, Daft Punk's fourth album Random Access Memories was released to the public in select countries around the world. It was well-received by critics, praising the genre change that Daft Punk made, including the album receiving Grammy album of the year, as well as a slew of other awards, and with Rolling Stone giving it a 4 out of 5 stars.^[4] Among the Daft Punk fanbase, however, it received mixed reviews, due to it being an incredibly different style compared to their earlier work. Among these was BBC Radio 1 DJ Jackmaster, who condemned the album over Twitter.

Listening to RAM obv. The first track is pish.

— JACKMASTER (@jackmaster) May 13, 2013

Sorry I take that back. 90% of the album is pish. Never thought in a million years that Get Lucky would be the best track on there.

— JACKMASTER (@jackmaster) May 13, 2013

Online Presence

Dancing Ninja

On October 23rd, 2004, YTMND user thenixfactor submitted an animated GIF of a dancing ninja accompanied by the Daft Punk song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (shown below). In the following nine years, the page garnered upwards of 1.01 million views and 610 comments.

Daft Hands

On June 6th, 2007, YouTuber FrEckle Studios uploaded a one take music video titled Daft Hands, featuring a pair of hands decorated with lyrics from the Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (shown below). Within five years, the video had received around 56 million views and 181,000 comments.

Helmets

Daft Punks helmets have been the center of much interest. From Discovery-onward, they wore them everywhere to conceal their identities. Interviews, public appearances, and concerts, they wore them. Thomas wears a silver helmet with a visor in front, and Guy-Manuel wears a gold helmet with a large, black visor up the front, and gold on the sides. Underneath the visors are LED's that can create different patterns on the visors. The helmets are custom made, and many people craft their own to cosplay as them. Custom made helmets can go over $200 in price.

Who's Daft Punk?

On October 19th, 2011, the single topic blog "Who's Daft Punk" was launched on Tumblr, which highlights edited versions of a photo of the unmasked duo featuring superimposed heads of other celebrities.

"Get Lucky"

On April 19th, 2013, Daft Punk released the single "Get Lucky" featuring Pharrell Williams (shown below, left). On the following day, the music blog Billboard^[2] reported that the song had set the record for the most streams of a single track in one day on the music application Spotify. Within one week, a copy of the track uploaded to the DaftPunkVEVO YouTube channel received over 4.94 million views and 14,200 comments. After a year, the video received over 230 million views. The track is currently the 43rd highest digital selling track of all time.^[5]

On April 21st, YouTuber MyMusicalTalen TM uploaded a fan made music video for the single (shown below, right), featuring footage taken from the 2006 Daft Punk film Electroma and a short film starring Pharrell Williams titled Ecology of Love. In the first five days, the video garnered more than 74,000 views and 110 comments.

On April 21st, 2013, YouTuber Maim Ixed uploaded a pitch-shifted version of the song, noting that the vocals sounded very similar to the deceased pop star Michael Jackson (shown below, left). In the following five days, the upload gained upwards of 735,000 views and 900 comments. On the following day, YouTuber indiarchitect paired the pitch-shifted song with footage of Michael Jackson performing on stage (shown below, right), garnering more than 41,000 views and 25 comments in the next four days.

In the coming days, several "Get Lucky" mashups were uploaded by other YouTubers, including versions using the Michael Jackson hits "Billy Jean" (shown below, left) and "Black or White" (shown below, right).

Reception

Daft Punk's music is often featured in YouTube Poop videos, remixes and mashups on the video-sharing site (shown below).

Several chiptune remixes of Daft Punk hits have been uploaded to YouTube, including 8-Bit versions of "Around the World" by YouTuber NESsongsrus (shown below, left) and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Snowbro (shown below, right). As of April 2013, each video has earned more than 750,000 views and 1,000 comments.

Split

On February 22nd, 2021, Daft Punk announced their split after 28 years of collaboration with an excerpt from their 2006 science-fiction film Electroma that was uploaded to YouTube^[6] in a video titled "Epilogue". The announcement was received with heartfelt comments from the fans.

The video later gained popularity as source material for humorous edits.

Search Interest

External References