Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories is perhaps the prime example of why I am really glad I don’t listen to the radio. My resistance to radio stations isn’t because I think I am above pop music by any means. Well crafted pop music can be beautiful, significant, and lasting. Michael Jackson wasn’t amazing because he was somehow popular without making actual pop music, the crowned King of Pop was amazing because he made perfect pop music that put on full display everything that pop was and is capable of. So, when I say I don’t listen to the radio (outside of KEXP), I don’t mean it in the “Kill Your Television” sense, I just hate how terrible radio stations are, what with their necessary enslavement to the record companies. If I listened to the radio, I would hate songs that I initially loved, just because they play the same six songs OVER and OVER and OVER.
Thus, I would hate the pop masterpiece “Get Lucky” if I’d allowed the radio to creep into my life. I shared the video clip of the song here on Roused after they shared a teaser clip at Coachella this year, and I never fell out of love with the song.
Whew, thank goodness I didn’t let the radio tarnish that! I’m glad that Daft Punk achieved their first massively played hit that wasn’t a Kanye West sample, and I am equally glad that the song wasn’t ruined for me as a result.
Random Access Memories is, in my opinion, an amazing album. It is a meticulously crafted love letter to music. It is a celebration of all the things that music can do, the way it helps us dance, party, grieve, love, and feel, the way music touches us and changes us. It is also a love letter to the craft of making music, of production and innovation, of looking backward and forward artistically. RAM varies quite a bit, from straightforward dance grooves to an interview with a man in his 70’s that somehow doesn’t get old for me with each listen, it goes from electric sex to songs that sound like they belong on a darkly epic broadway musical. The album shifts from vapid to profound, deep to shallow, but somehow never sacrifices its place as a technically tight and perfectly produced whole.
I love these masked musical hooligans.
This post comes with not one, but TWO Daft Punk music videos!
Ryan
“Around the World” got lots of radio play in the late 90’s – this isn’t the first big hit, just the first one most people who listen to radio are old enough to recognize.
It’s a great album. This will be the least suspenseful Album of the Year Grammy presentation in a long time.
Scott
They’ve had hits, but nothing close to the success of “Get Lucky.”
“Around the World never made it higher on the US charts than 61. Whereas “Get Lucky” reached #2 and went platinum in 11 countries and multiple platinum in 9. As far as big hits go, this is practically a categorical difference.