Up until now, I have chosen not to listen for fear of being disappointed yet again by what is, for all intents and purposes, the musical equivalent of "The Hangover" trilogy. If I had a nickel for each time an overly eclectic NPR station, or hipper-than-thou blogger, has raved endlessly about "the next big thing" only to have it sound like a third-rate retread of something that was done so much better thirty years ago, I could hire Andrew W.K. and the Strokes to play my birthday party.
So, yeah, I haven't heard "Get Lucky".
What little Daft Punk I have heard over the past half decade has always seemed a little Mickey Mouse to me, like a Disney version of Kraftwerk, or something Liam Gallagher could've written in five minutes, har, har.
Of course, the main problem I have with most electronic music is this lazy belief that you can never hear a hook too many times and that a twelve-minute rump shaker can be built on a cotton candy fart of an actual song. How much ecstasy must one ingest to find "Technologic" listenable?
But, hey, this is all about "Get Lucky", which, for the sake of this article, not to mention mankind, I will listen to right now for the very first time.
Okay, here goes...
My first thought is that if this tune was on the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack, it would be overshadowed by, I dunno, every other song on the album.
I bring up "Saturday Night Fever" only because the album is an obvious influence on Daft Punk. In fact, if I were to peer into their record collection, I would not be disappointed to find most to be from disco's golden era, 1977-1980.
While I would hope that such a musical foundation might lead to some tasty anthems for the New Millennium, "Get Lucky" is little more than a rote attempt to recapture that iconic early disco feel without actually breathing any new life into the genre.
Given hope by the title "Giorgio By Moroder", the track itself is neither a musical nod to or tribute to the legendary disco producer. Instead, we are treated to an almost two-minute sample of Giorgio talking about his career and then six minutes of DP trying to sound like Steely Dan. Not a bad thing, mind you, but better left to Steely Dan.
"Beyond" starts out like the opening credits to some new Disney film, then settles into a tasty groove swiped wholesale from Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin'".
Since Daft Punk has echoed this very sentiment, why, with all of the technology available to anyone with a computer, is nobody able to come up with anything new? You would think that those with any musical genius at all would be taking music to new heights each and every day. Instead, we find ourselves being forced to accept Kanye's many Antilles' Autotune demonstrations as "genius".
While I can understand the desire of each new generation to have something of their own to define their musical character, it literally hurts to see kids get so excited over such lesser talents rather than merely embrace the far-superior original, regardless of when it came out.