Deep Album Cuts Vol. 406: Daft Punk
I started working on this playlist a few years ago when Daft Punk disbanded and I was asked to write a Spin piece of their ten best songs. So this week I finally went back and finished it up.
Daft Punk deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Short Circuit
2. WDPK 83.7 FM
3. Fresh
4. Within
5. Television Rules the Nation
6. The Game Has Changed
7. Voyager
8. Too Long / Steam Machine (live)
9. Giorgio by Morodor (with Giorgio Morodor)
10. Teachers
11. Fragments of Time (with Todd Edwards)
12. Veridis Quo
13. Make Love
14. Phoenix
15. Superheroes
16. Prime Time of Your Life / Brainwasher / Rollin' & Scratchin' / Alive (live)
17. End of Line
Tracks 2, 3, 10, and 14 from Homework (1997)
Tracks 1, 7, 12, and 15 from Discovery (2001)
Tracks 5 and 13 from Human After All (2005)
Tracks 8 and 16 from Alive 2007 (2007)
Tracks 6 and 17 from Tron: Legacy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2010)
Tracks 4, 9, and 11 from Random Access Memories (2013)
Now that the group is officially over, it's even more impressive to think about what an impact Daft Punk made with just four albums and a soundtrack, each one having its own pretty distinct sound and feel. With acts like that, I sometimes feel like the only way to make a playlist of their catalog is to put the songs in chronological order, but I try to mix up the chronology when I can, and I was pleasantly surprised that it felt right here.
I went to Florida with some college friends for spring break 2002, and my main memory of the road trip was listening to Discovery and Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory multiple times. Discovery is so fucking good. I think Human After All somewhat justifiably has a reputation as Daft Punk's weakest album but it has some great moments and I think has more continuity with their other albums, particularly Homework, than people give it credit for. Some songs definitely sound better in their Alive 2007 versions, though.
Daft Punk's name was famously inspired by how a reviewer described one of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's early bands, so I guess they were rockers before they made dance music, so maybe it makes sense that they became the dance act that everyone from every genre could agree on, the one that made the first dance album to win Album of the Year at the Grammys. Random Access Memories was a little divisive among music nerds, maybe it felt like too much of a prestige move for some people. But I kind of like when albums like RAM or Cowboy Carter are recognized for being a sort of quasi-academic study of music history in album form. Daft Punk were always quick to note their influences and predecessors, and it was fun to put "Teachers" from their first album in between two songs they later made with artists they namechecked on "Teachers." That moment when Giorgio Moroder says "My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me...Giorgio," I love it so much, gets me every time.
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