The French electronic music duo was founded in Paris in 1993 by two teenagers Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. They have been responsible for some of the most influential dance tracks of all time. 28 years later, Daft Punk has announced their retirement. Read to find out more.
Phalguni Gupta | BeatCurry Team
The news came out after they released a YouTube video titled ‘Epilogue’. The video features the duo in their iconic robot costumes and jackets that read “Daft Punk”, where they are seen walking in the desert when one of them decides to self-destruct. A timer starts ticking in the background until it hits zero leading to one of the members exploding and the dates ‘1993 – 2021’ appearing on-screen indicating the year the band was formed. The video then ends with the other member walking into the sunset, accompanied by the song Touch, “Hold on. If love is the answer you’re home.” The band’s publicist Kathryn Frazier confirmed the split but offered no explanation behind the break-up.
Don Diablo, a Dutch DJ, musician and songwriter took to Twitter to pay his tribute to the duo, he posted a gif with Daft Punk with a caption that read “Goodbye you LEGENDS thank you for inspiring me to make electronic music when I was a kid. #DaftPunk #Forever”
Their debut album Homework was released by Virgin Records in 1997 which received positive reviews, further came their singles “Around the World” and “Da Funk.” Their one of the most enduring songs was,” ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” from the album ‘Discovery’ released in 2001. Based completely around Edwin Birdsong’s Cola Bottle Baby, a forgotten 70s funk track, it adds a simple vocal line (“Work it harder, make it better/Do it faster, makes us stronger“) that is twisted and manipulated in increasingly inventive ways until it’s barely recognisable as anything but signal noise.
To protect their personal identities, they started wearing helmets, outfits and gloves in 1999 taking up their robot personas. “We’re not performers, we’re not models – it would not be enjoyable for humanity to see our features,” de Homem-Christo once told Rolling Stone magazine, “but the robots are exciting to people” as quoted by the BBC. Their major success was with the album Random Access Memories which was named as the album of the year at the 2013 Grammy awards the hit single from the album, Get Lucky, featuring US performer Pharrell Williams, won the Grammy for record of the year.
“Thankful to be a part of the journey,” said The Weeknd on his Instagram Story with whom the duo collaborated on two tracks, Starboy and I Feel It Coming, in 2016.
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