Disco Punk

Critics of the new Daft Punk Record, I disagree with your views. Here’s why:

For starters you’re listening to the long anticipated new Daft Punk album, not the long anticipated new Knife album (that came out last month). So I think expectations need to be checked accordingly. Cheese has been part and parcel of the Daft Punk “sound” since Homework. 

We are fans of Nile Rogers and Chic, yes? Bar the odd reference to prog, Random Access Memories is much more indebted to the Disco sounds of the late seventies. What I find confusing is that while many people are happy to “get the fuck down” to the ultra-cheese of Chic circa C’est Chic, they get much more squeamish when Daft Punk pen a few stinky lyrics. Let’s not forget that today’s oh-so-serious EDM and Dance music actually has its origins in Disco—which is kind of the point of the new record.

The lyrics are not meant to be looked at in isolation. The lyrics, like all the other Disco-shtick on Random Access Memories (the stylised font, the vintage vocoders, the fucking Nile Rogers guitar) are an extension of the music’s feel-good vibe. The late seventies and early eighties was a pretty shit time for a lot of people (in some respects, it isn’t wildly different to 2013). Disco and the club culture it became synonymous with offered an escape into pure, don’t-over-think-it, hedonism and indulgence. Critics that cite the lyrics, or the indulgent hooks as reasons why the new Daft Punk album is not good, might want to think things through a little more. Because to me, it looks like a bunch of stuck-ups can’t explain why having a good time is such a big deal. Moreover, there’s a worrying precedent for this: The Disco Sucks movement, which was something like Punk in reverse. Essentially, a bunch of supremacists shut down Disco, so that Hair Metal and 80’s AOR could have its day. Which is pretty tragic when you think about it. Disco was absolute simplicity, music distilled into a groove—then a bunch of white guys came along and claimed that it was shit because it wasn’t complicated enough. So yeah, please tell us more about how “cringey” the new Daft Punk album is EDM fans, at least these French guys have some sense of perspective.

I saw a documentary a few weeks ago which revealed that “Good Times” by Chic is based on Milton Ager’s “Happy Times Are Here Again” (a depression-era work song). Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers found ways to comment on the bleak social and economic outlook of 1979 in a cheese-y dance song that contained hammy lyrics like this:

"Good times, these are the good times
Leave your cares behind, these are the good times
Good times, these are the good times
Our new state of mind, these are the good times"

Chic (and indeed Disco legends like Abba, Donna Summer and Sister Sledge) found ways to write inclusive music with hidden depth. The songwriting on Random Access Memories is similarly open - a lot of people are going to enjoy dancing to this record - whereas I don't think it's wildly presumptuous to suggest that a lot of today's EDM is decidedly non-egalitarian (James Blake reckons so anyway).

Disco was also music that wasn't afraid to reach backwards. So while there are cringey lyrics in Random Access Memories, they serve (like the music itself) to tease out the parallels between today's dance scene (which Homework and Discovery had a hand in defining) and the dance music of 1977 to 1979.

In doing so the album functions, at the very least, as a welcome reprieve to the stuckup, bullshit, pissing contest that is today’s EDM scene.

Don't be a drag, participate.

Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27est_Chic
http://www.metrolyrics.com/good-times-lyrics-chic.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVmAXWZu_PQ
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16577-the-visitors-deluxe-edition/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night