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Daft Punk in a funk

It’s been twenty years since Daft Punk formed, and their latest single – a collaboration with Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D. fame – shows the age of both parties involved.  ‘Get Lucky’ starts exactly as it ends, and very little of interest happens in between.

The disco groove established by Chic’s guitarist Nile Rodgers and the rhythm section, complete with old-skool hand claps on beats two and four, sounds like a throwback to the 90s.  In fact, the track as a whole feels like a pastiche of Travelling Without Moving-era Jamiroquai.  However, the forceful vocal performance of Jay Kay – or even of Pharrell Williams – is nowhere to be found.  His performance is surprisingly bland, and his voice comes across as uncertain, with an uncharacteristic fragility to it, perhaps due to the lack of rhythmic impetus in the rest of the song; a common feature in his previous projects.  Even his trademark “Huh” after the opening “like the legend of the phoenix” sounds forced and self-conscious.

The lyrics themselves are also remarkably unimaginative.  In the chorus, Williams sings: “We’re up all night ‘til the sun / We’re up all night to get some / We’re up all night for good fun” and although the title line “We’re up all night to get lucky” sounds tacky the first time, its excessive repetitions border on the annoying.  Although lyrical variety has hardly been one of Daft Punk’s strengths in the past (“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is a case in point), the lack of vocal intensity – or any intensity aside from in Rodgers’ guitar playing – reduces the already banal, misogynistic lyrics to a subterranean level.

That Daft Punk were even involved in this single at all would have been anyone’s guess until over halfway through, when the French duo decided to whip out their trademark synthesisers and vocoders, but the effect is again one of pastiche.  The difference is that they are pastiching themselves from twenty years ago.  As is the case with many groups who last longer than their pre-allocated minutes of fame, they have become their own cover band.

More disconcertingly, this track has made it to the number one spot in the charts.  It is an island in the ocean of mediocre, over-dynamicised chart music that is paradoxically enjoying commercial success because of its complete lack of dynamic interest; a “breath of fresh air” as Fatboy Slim has called it.  Maybe this single’s success tells us more about the metaphorical air we have become used to than it does about the quality of Daft Punk’s latest offering.

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