The 10 Best Daft Punk Songs of All-Time
Daft Punk has split up. However, there can be no doubt about the duo’s impact on dance music and thus modern music as a whole. Almost three decades have seen Daft Punk release more than 20 singles, which include some that promise to be remembered for a long time to come.
10. Teachers
“Teachers” is a song on Daft Punk’s debut album Homework. It wasn’t one of the singles. However, it was nonetheless notable because it was a shout-out to a huge number of musicians who had influenced the duo in one way or another, thus making it very clear why Homework was called Homework. For the most part, the musicians were pretty much what one would expect, but it is interesting to note that there were names such as Dr. Dre and Brian Wilson, which foreshadowed Daft Punk’s willingness to take inspiration from a very wide range of sources.
9. Disc Wars
Daft Punk was the perfect choice for the Tron: Legacy soundtrack. This is because of their sometimes retrofuturistic sound, which was very fitting for the follow-up to a sci-fi movie inspired by Pong of all things. As such, it was no wonder that both the movie’s director and the movie’s sound supervisor approached Daft Punk to do the job. “Disc Wars” is one of the best songs from the resulting soundtrack.
8. Digital Love
This Discovery single is an excellent example of Daft Punk’s ability to draw inspiration from the past before using that to create something new of their own. It is most notable for featuring a sample from George Duke’s “I Love You More.” However, “Digital Love” was also reminiscent of other past greats.
7. Get Lucky
“Get Lucky” was the lead single from Daft Punk’s fourth album Random Access Memories, which for the foreseeable future, is their final album as well. It was a huge hit in 2013, helped along by both Pharrell Williams’s vocals and Nile Rodgers’s guitar-playing. Moreover, “Get Lucky” seems to possess a considerable measure of staying power, seeing as how it remains well-liked even though that initial rush of enthusiasm has faded.
6. I Feel It Coming
Technically, “I Feel It Coming” is a song by the Weeknd. However, it still counts because it featured Daft Punk. “I Feel It Coming” isn’t the only song that the two acts collaborated upon, but it tends to be better-known than “Starboy,” which was the title track on the relevant album. Regardless, both songs make it very clear that the two acts made for a very good team-up.
5. Da Funk
“Da Funk” wasn’t Daft Punk’s first single, but it came out before their first album, on which it was also included. More relevantly, the song was a considerable success, meaning that it played a notable role in propelling Daft Punk to further prominence. Even now, “Da Funk” can be deemed a true classic of the house music of the 1990s, particularly because of its Spike Jonze-directed video that served to further cement it in the minds of both critics and consumers.
4. Crescendolls
“Crescendolls” is one of the songs off of Discovery. The name can seem rather strange because there aren’t a lot of things that immediately come to mind based on that particular jumble of word parts. Instead, everything makes more sense when one remembers that Discovery was paired with an actual, no-kidding anime movie called Interstella 5555 that had no dialogue but nonetheless managed to tell its story by just playing Discovery songs throughout. “Crescendolls” refers to the Crescendolls, which would be the name of the alien band whose members serve as the protagonists of the anime movie.
3. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is another song off of Discovery. Unlike “Crescendolls,” it is much better-known. In part, this is because it was one of the album’s six singles, meaning that it was always going to have an advantage in this regard. Even so, it is also important to point out that “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” was a huge critical and commercial success. For proof, consider how it walked away with the Grammy for Best Dance Recording in 2009, which is no mean achievement. Under those circumstances, it was no coincidence that it became one of Daft Punk’s most iconic tracks. Something that goes hand-in-hand with it being one of the better songs released in the 2000s.
2. Around the World
Songs don’t necessarily to be particularly complicated to be good. This is shown by “Around the World,” which is simple and repetitive in nature. Said description isn’t a matter of personal judgment. Instead, it was the assessment of a study of repetitiveness in Billboard Hot 100 hits. The relevant scientist Colin Morris looked into a total of 15,000 songs based on compression algorithms. His findings revealed that “Around the World” was the most repetitive of them all. Regardless, it is important to note that the song isn’t good in spite of this. Instead, one can argue that it is good because of this. Certainly, a lot of people agreed with the general positive assessment of “Around the World” in the late 1990s because its success further cemented the reputation that Daft Punk had already built for themselves.
1. One More Time
If people are asked to name the Daft Punk song, there is a very good chance of “One More Time” coming up. Amusingly, it was actually criticized at the time of its release because of its use of a vocoder. However, its silence has managed to silence all criticism in that regard. Regardless, “One More Time” is also well-known because of the vocals provided by Romanthony, who apparently found it fascinating to hear the way that his vocals were changed to make them more in-line with Daft Punk’s vision for the song. Speaking of which, it is said that the duo didn’t release the song right away but instead kept it close for two years’ choice. Something that proved to be more than worthwhile in the end.
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