The Pop Corporation

These are always exercises that are effectively futile and occasionally controversial, but it’s fun to make lists and order things for people to agree and disagree with, right? And it’s worth pointing out that such lists are invariably the fruit of something thinking about something popular that they’re going to arbitrarily score lowly, and something undervalued that they’ll score highly so they can give the song its flowers.

So, we’re going to look at the works of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo because they’re brilliant and also because they had the good grace to split up with a tasteful amount of releases under their belt so we don’t end up with an overly long list on our hands. We’re not including live bits, soundtracks or the drumless versions because we’re not. Just straight-up singles from studio albums under the Daft Punk banner. That means no Stardust. That means no ‘Musique’ because it was a b-side, as much as it is absolutely one of our favourite tracks from Thomas and Guy-Man.

Want to press play on some videos and remind yourself of how much you like Daft Punk? Want to disagree with some of the choices made?
D’accord! Cela va être très amusant pour ceux d’entre vous qui aiment les listes inutiles!

THE PRIME TIME OF YOUR LIFE

Look, there’s not much in Daft Punk’s back catalogue that truly stinks – however, there was a period in the ‘Human After All’ years where they didn’t feel like they were walking on water like the rest of their career. Gurgling electroclash house abounded and it might be worth noting that it was during this time that they were playing live in their glowing pyramid, so something beefier was no doubt needed to pummel audiences full of pills. French dance music was pretty heavy during this period and this was something of a precursor for the wub wub of stadium-sized dubstep and recovering Emos making something broadly called ‘EDM’ now. Maybe we’re holding its legacy against it? It’s not our favourite.

TECHNOLOGIC

This is basically interchangeable with ‘The Prime Time Of Your Life’. It’s a bit irritating and sounds as close to novelty as Daft Punk ever got BUT you have to concede that it’s something of an earworm. Then again, so was Crazy Frog (incidentally, that’d be an excellent Daft Punk tribute act name, on the proviso that it’s a sarcastic French crew behind it and not some xenophobic rosbif). Anyway, this pretty popular and it’s catchy, so we’ll place it marginally above the bottom rung.

THE NEW WAVE

Remember Daft Punk’s debut single? It was released in 1994 on Soma Records in Glasgow, founded by Slam, Glenn Gibbons and the mighty Dave Clarke. The track is a sparse affair from the Dafties, and something of a pre-cursor for some of the bangers that would appear on ‘Homework’. It was fresh and different from the rest of the dance music world – it’s kinda techno, but it’s definitely not as po-faced as a lot of the stuff being released in ’94. A solid start from a band that were, not to long before this, something of an rock band called Darlin’ featuring members of Phoenix. They got the Soma deal after attending a rave, and bumping into one of the Slam heads at, get this – EuroDisney.

INSTANT CRUSH

This is a track that absolutely lives or dies by whether or not you’re into Julian Casablancas’ schtick. You’ll not really find a fan of The Strokes here and, indeed, even looking at The Lonely Island’s comedy collabs, it’s the Casablancas one that leaves us wanting, so this one is almost entirely on our shoulders. It’s a dance/rock chugger that is no doubt wildly popular with the hordes of people who love The Strokes and ’00s indie, so y’know, feel free to disagree.

DOIN’ IT RIGHT

Honestly, we barely remember this being a single but that’s what the information in front of us says. It didn’t chart too well, so we think it might have been one of those releases that was designed to keep Daft Punk’s toe in the momentum. It’s a slinky little chugger featuring Panda Bear of the Animal Collective. It’s a sort of tribute to ’80s electro and boogie – and it’s very well received amongst the critics. Some say it’s the best thing on ‘Random Access Memories’, but we disagree respectfully.

LOSE YOURSELF TO DANCE

Pharrell heard this track as a mid ’80s stomper, almost as if it was a David Bowie track, which is perhaps why we’re just not as keen on this being Bowie ambivalent. It’s related closely to ‘Get Lucky’ just by virtue of the personnel, and doesn’t reach the heights. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison, but when you’re dealing with a back catalogue as strong as Daft Punk’s, you have to use what you can to get an ultimately pointless ordering of great songs together.

HUMAN AFTER ALL

In the electro-clash adjacent years, ‘Human After All’ needed to bridge the gap between the robotic funk of ‘Around The World’ and what was to come next. Heavily synthesised voices, heady fuzzy keyboards and clicky beats, this opened the album of the same name. It was pointing toward the group’s future workouts and not without merit and sounded like major label, big spender electronic music, but for our money, more suited to the live show than the club.

SOMETHING ABOUT US

A bold move to put out a slowie, but by this point in their career, Daft Punk weren’t just any old pair of dance music producers. This was them flexing their record collector muscles and showing that slowing the groove was every bit as great as the bangers. Supremely emotional lyrically, only heightened by the autotuned, vocodered vocals, you hear “I might not be the right one” eventually making way to the yearning “I need you more than anything in my life” with lilting ’70s keys and thumbed bass. Sensational.

INDO SILVER CLUB

One of Daft Punk’s most gonzo pieces of music, ‘Indo Silver Club’ is a rubbery banger with euphoric pluses and clicky goodness. It’s one for the sweaty club and not the radio, it shows Daft Punk in something akin to a jamming mode, bending all the circuits out of shape and frying your brain in the process, all backed by a killer low-end and a rousing, skuzzy finish. Early on in their career, this kind of track is exactly what saw Daft Punk as so different from their peers.

GIVE LIFE BACK TO MUSIC

The opening track from ‘Random Access Memories’, it’s Daft Punk at their silkiest, with their robot-funk paired up with Nile Rodgers and Chilli Gonzales and the most live the group had ever sounded. Recorded where the first Chic single had been cut, it’s a gorgeous piece of sophisticated disco pop, which doesn’t hit as hard as other Daft Punk hits, but that’s not the point. This track sounded like a love letter to all those great records from the Chic Organization, melded expertly with the synthetic hum of the French touch.

BURNIN’

A fabulously skuzzy slab of Daft house music that’ll have you ruining your trainers in some dirty club, ‘Burnin’ is one of the standouts on the brilliant ‘Homework’. If the bug-eyed swirl of the synth doesn’t have your eyes on stalks, then it paving way into some supremely seductive Chicago-ish house will. It’s one of those tracks that probably makes next to no sense to someone who hasn’t found themselves in a rave in a small room before, but for those that have, this is exactly what you need and different enough to make any would-be fan say “what the hell was that?! I love it!” All the French electronic producers that followed owe this song a lot.

ROBOT ROCK

The highlight from the ‘Human After All’ LP, ‘Robot Rock’ is the Dafties with one foot on the monitor with a track that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s like they build two humanoids and gave them a load of records by The James Gang and AC/DC, stirred in some of their pals Justice and Busy P, and left them to it. It’s a gigantic slab of a track that was one of the cornerstones of their live shows from their neon pyramid. An absolute smasher and we’ve embedded the live version here to underline just what a behemoth it is.

REVOLUTION 909

Perhaps the purest house track ever cut by Daft Punk, it’s the high water line for deep, heavily filtered French house music. Insanely druggy, woozy and blissful in a sweaty club, ‘Revolution 909’ ran so much of French house music could walk. It was deep house enough for the dance music intelligentsia, but heavy enough to remember what it was for – and that was for pounding your feet and putting your damned hands together. A real gurner of a track. If you’ve never understood the appeal of this track you’ve been taking the wrong drugs.

AERODYNAMIC

Daft Punk’s stadium rock track from the future, ‘Aerodynamic’ is Daft Punk past, present and future. While the rest of dance music had cottoned onto Guy-Man and Thomas’ sampling of disco and funky AOR, Daft Punk went in harder and almost hair metal. Arguably the greatest song outside of Van Halen to feature tapping on the neck of a guitar, the track is restless and glowing before breaking down into a smooth electro bumper that no-one else on the planet could do.

DIGITAL LOVE

‘Digital Love’ was the first time we’d heard the soft pop element in Daft Punk’s music really shine through. With a glittering ’70s AOR rock vocal filtered robotically with a smooth as butter funk, they’d really found their identity. With a Wurlitzer piano in the middle that they likened to Supertramp and a blistering analogue synth solo that sounded like Journey or something, ‘Digital Love’, this wasn’t just some dance track – it’s big budget as we sangalong to “last night, I had a dream about you – in this dream, I’m dancing right beside you…“

DA FUNK

While the world was entranced by young dance music producers sampling hip hop and rock records, Daft Punk appeared with a new set of sensibilities – notably, disco. With ‘Da Funk’, they managed to straddle both worlds, slowing the 4/4 down to a tempo that would have pleased the indie dance heads and the like. However, there was something markedly different with Daft Punk – sure, this track has a 303 and other analogue squelches, but there was something deeper and funkier going down. It was more Cameo than it was Public Enemy. The bass pounded like kids who had been to different clubs. The music didn’t sound as geeky as their peers. It was cooler. It received a boost after being initially ignored by the Chemical Brothers including it in their sets and support from Annie Nightingale saw a bidding war for this achingly hip new French duo. This is the track that really kicked things off.

GET LUCKY

Even now, it is almost impossible to be objective about ‘Get Lucky’ as it somehow still feels ubiquitous despite being over a decade old. That’s how brilliant Daft Punk are. Another one of their perfectly-timed tracks for a glorious summer, they teamed up with Pharrell Williams before he got a bit annoying, and it was a marriage made in heaven. On board was Nile Rodgers too, and between them, they created a timeless banger that was Daft Punk’s most sophisticated hit to date. The whole thing sounds expensive like old disco records, before Guy-Man and Thomas break the whole thing down into a propulsive robot boogie of vocoders and rubbery bass. If we were being fair, this could have easily topped the chart or featured higher, but this is Daft Punk we’re talking about here – they’ve got an embarrassment of riches in their arsenal.

HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER

With a sample found in the record bins, Daft Punk turned Edwin Birdsong’s ‘Cola Bottle Baby’ inside out, adding the most French robot vocal you’ve ever heard (seriously – listen to the pronunciation of ‘strongeur‘) – it’s the perfect encapsulation of everything that’s so irresistible about the group. Hard edits, elastic bassline, android vocals, simple repetitive messaging and it bangs like the fireworks on Bastille Day. It spirals upwards and outwards before a choppy finish sends you into a meltdown. Superb, top to bottom.

FACE TO FACE

If there’s such a thing as an underrated Daft Punk track, then this is it. Co-produced with Todd Edwards, ‘Face To Face’ is just about as perfect as it gets in Daft Punk world. Utilising cut-up edits, Daft Punk asked Edwards to “sing a little rapsier – like Foreigner” which is part of group’s success, drawing on much more than just dance music. It’s worth noting that Daft Punk may have brought back disco, but their choice of samples and aesthetic brought back so much more – they were on the satin jackets, bearded Beach Boy period, what would become yacht rock, soft pop, Euro Disco and more besides, long before anyone else.

‘Face To Face’ is the first track which opened up Daft Punk into making music that wasn’t just dance music, even though it is a fabulous slice of French house. It was probably the most futuristic Daft Punk had sounded, coupling the creative editing and future funk – and the track followed ‘Short Circuit’ on the masterful ‘Discovery’, because they wanted it to sound like the old Daft Punk was ‘shutting down’, paving the way for this new version of themselves. A masterpiece.

AROUND THE WORLD

One of Daft Punk’s most magic of tricks is the way they make the repetitive not boring. On the face of it, this is simply a song with a good beat, good bassline and the lyrics “around the world, around the wurr-uld” over and over (144 times) again… but it’s clearly so much more than that. It’s hypnotic, it’s charming, it’s completely addictive and of all of Daft Punk’s early work, it’s the most realised piece of music that somehow worked not just in the dance area, but crossed over into other clubs. A brilliant video only underlined it’s greatness.

In 1997, a lot of the so-called alt dance focused on big thunderous breakbeats and screaming 303s, and in 4/4 circles, Sash! released ‘Encore En Fois’. However, house was having something of a second wind with Masters at Work, Todd Terry, Armand Van Helden and Byron Stingly working the soulful grooves. However, Daft Punk released ‘Around The World’ and it sounded every bit as beautiful as a Chic Organization release, but with an incessant robotic vocal which would pave the way for Thomas and Guy-Man to start fully committing to the android bit. On this release, they effectively became the new Kraftwerk, part man, part machine. After the release of ‘Homework’ and particularly this hit, Madonna rediscovered her house roots, Hot N Juicy’s ‘Horny’ had a distinct French bounce to it, and other French artists found themselves with improved budgets and bigger splashes. After years in the wilderness, disco music was fully back on the map and it’s this record that largely laid out the red carpet for it. Crunchy enough for the Big Beat fans in Adidas shell-toes, elegant enough for the house crowd, and a surprising pop hit. This was the first sign of Daft Punk’s future greatness.

ONE MORE TIME

It was nigh-on impossible to choose the finest moment in Daft Punk’s career, but when you consider all of the things that make Daft Punk so great, it really had to be ‘One More Time’. See, there’s a number of summers that were glorious and almost every one of them was timed with a massive Daft Punk single (or related). ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ actively turned the thermostat up on an already glorious summer, and so too with ‘Get Lucky’. However, the summer song to end them all was a magical, unique, bouncing disco-house boogie that dialled directly into our feet and spirits and lifted the whole of house music up around it.

The best of Daft Punk is the simplicity of message and “one more time” just in time for the drop was the perfect tonic. It’s little wonder that readers of Mixmag said it was the greatest dance single of all time, and Romanthany’s processed vocals bridged the gap between the ‘Homework’ era and the incoming resurgence in clubs for disco, which Daft Punk played a gigantic part of. Importantly, it was uniquely French and Daft Punk’s unique approach saw dancefloors faced with one of the longest breakdowns ever, before being rewarded with one of the finest, most swooping and melodramatic drops ever recorded, allowing us all to sing at the top of our lungs MUSIC’S GOT ME FEELING SO FREE – WE’RE GONNA CELEBRATE.

It felt like the song was all forms of dance music distilled into eight glorious minutes, coming just after the French football team become the first in history to back-to-back win a World Cup and a European Championship, it felt like the French were the greatest country to ever exist. The outpouring of joy in the song won over the chin-stroker DJs in the underground, it dazzled the pop charts, and still now, it sounds like perfection at any peak moment of a set.

If there’s a hall of fame for records that are designed to be danced to, ‘One More Time’ is in there and scoring highly with ‘I Feel Love’, ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ and ‘Big Fun’. Irresistible and utterly, utterly perfect.