Daft Punk’s triumphant finale is a mature reflection on 10 Years of Random Access Memories.
Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories has aged impeccably, and the new 10th Anniversary Edition of the album is a graceful way for the duo to end their historic career.
In the decade since its release in 2013, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories has created an impressive legacy for itself. The album was certified platinum, peaked at #1 on the US Billboard 200, and brought Daft Punk four Grammys in 2014, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for their hit single “Get Lucky.” When Daft Punk split in 2021, many fans (myself included) feared that there would be no new music from the iconic electronic music duo. But, on May 17th, 2023, the robots released a 10th Anniversary Edition of their final album. The release comes with nine new tracks, including unreleased and unfinished songs, as well as glimpses behind the scenes of Daft Punk’s music-making process. The updated album has also been accompanied by the gradual release of the Memory Tapes, a set of video interviews that gives us even more context on how Daft Punk meticulously crafted their final masterpiece. While we cannot be certain if this is the last we will hear from Daft Punk, this extension is a fitting homage not only to Random Access Memories, but also to the duo’s entire musical career.
I always sensed that there was something special about Random Access Memories—the album rejuvenated me in a way that I couldn’t put into words until I realized Daft Punk already did it for me. With “Give Life Back to Music,” the album’s opening track, Daft Punk provides a fitting thesis statement for their project. The synthesized voice repeats just two lines throughout the entire song: “Let the music in tonight, just turn on the music. Let the music of your life give life back to music.” It’s a simple but elegant way to characterize the mission of Random Access Memories to revitalize music. You can feel it in the instrumental too—I just can’t help nodding my head along to Nile Rodgers’ funky disco-inspired riff that persists through the entire track and infuses me with unmatched energy. I get the same sensation from “Get Lucky,” the smash hit of the album which, like “Give Life Back to Music,” perfectly captures the nostalgic and lively feel of funk and disco. It feels as if the song was omnipresent throughout my late childhood, always playing at the perfect moment when I just needed to get up and dance. Random Access Memories’ radiant energy proved to me that music can serve as the fuel of my life.
The album also taught me that our modern fixation on genre tries too hard to put music in distinct boxes. I never really know what to say when people ask me what kind of music I listen to—how can I possibly sum up my music taste with a short list of genres? But Daft Punk rises above this trend, unapologetically combining and defying genres. “Giorgio by Moroder” is Daft Punk’s genre-bending masterpiece, perfectly embodying this trait in its utilization of spoken word, synth riffs, jazz elements, orchestral compositions, and more. I was awestruck by the sheer number of different musical elements in the song when I first listened to it, and it still never fails to impress me. Moroder describes it perfectly on the track: “Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and of music being correct, you can do whatever you want.” Daft Punk embraces this mentality throughout the album: I feel it in “Motherboard,” a song that feels more like an evolving, living form than a static, identifiable object; and in “Contact” too, the album’s hyper-energetic finale that I identify more with a narrative science-fiction film than with traditional music forms. As an album, Random Access Memories could never be put in any single box, and I have learned to appreciate and embrace this aspect of the album as a signal of Daft Punk’s true creative license.
Random Access Memories was also the first of Daft Punk’s work that I ever listened to—and over time, as I have explored more of the duo’s discography, I have realized that the album was fitting to be the duo’s final full-length project. Daft Punk’s journey has been a tale of two robots learning about humanity, which has manifested itself musically through the duo’s use of sampling. But in Random Access Memories, the vibe shifts—suddenly the robots aren’t only sampling beats and electronic elements, they’re sampling humans. Todd Edwards described this phenomenon, saying “The Daft Punk ideas that they would get in sampling kind of found their way into organic forms.” Listening back to the album, I realize that the entire project is rooted in the human element of musicianship, whether it be Nile Rodgers' iconic funk riffs, Nathan East’s catchy baselines, or Omar Hakim’s nuanced drumming. These incredible musicians truly left their mark on the album, but not without Daft Punk also bringing their robotic influence. The countless synths, vocoders, and electronic elements of the album give it that unique Daft Punk flair. Perhaps this is why Random Access Memories served as a welcoming introduction for me to the world of Daft Punk—the album contains an appropriate and approachable combination of Daft Punk’s unique artistic style with more traditional musical elements.
Naturally, I was afraid that the first work I ever heard from Daft Punk would be the last that they would ever release; it’s never a nice feeling to discover new artists just when they stop making new music. But, luckily for all Daft Punk fans, Random Access Memories wasn’t the last work that we heard from the duo—the robots gave us a final glimpse at their true musicianship with the release of the 10th Anniversary Edition of their iconic final album.
The 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories opens with “Horizon Ouverture,” a simple composition of choral vocals and a string orchestra. If you don’t think that sounds very Daft Punk, you’re probably right. Yet the opening track works and it exhibits one of my favorite aspects of this release—Daft Punk’s embrace of subtlety, a sign of their true musical maturity. This was already apparent in Random Access Memories, especially with the understated pop-piece “Instant Crush,” the delicate ballad “Within,” and the ethereal “Touch.” 10 years later, the robots dive even deeper into this deeply emotional and human realm of music. Take, for example, the release’s final listing: “Touch (2021 Epilogue).” The ending of “Touch” was already one of the most vulnerable and mature moments on Random Access Memories, but now the duo takes it even further. The first time I heard this new version of the epilogue, I was taken aback by the way the track built energy only to cut into a deep silence which is broken by the voices of a young chorus telling us “Hold on, if love is the answer, you’re home.” Each time I hear this single line, my experience of it is entirely unique; sometimes the words seem happy and uplifting, but other times they strike me as deeply melancholy. Either way, even though these are the same sweet lyrics from the original version of the song, the emotional weight of the words is multiplied by the duo’s embrace of silence. When the track reaches its climax, I encourage you to close your eyes and allow yourself to truly experience the stillness that follows—then let those angelic voices speak to you.
DJ Falcon said in his Memory Tapes interview that “[Daft Punk are] always searching for some magic moment, and when it’s happening, it’s kind of a release.” The subtlety of “Horizon Ouverture” and “Touch (2021 Epilogue)” allows the songs to provide the emotional release that Daft Punk was chasing; listening to either song in the right mood stirs up emotions in a truly magical way. But I would argue that the true emotional release—the magic moment—of the 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories is “Infinity Repeating,” the 2013 demo track that Julian Casablancas described as “appropriate…to end Daft Punk on forever.” What Casablancas might have been implying was how “Infinity Repeating” acts as an emotional moment to reflect upon the end of Daft Punk. When I hear the song’s chorus, “It's not true, it’s not right. It’s not how we used to do,” I can only think that Casablancas is singing about the end of Daft Punk’s career, reflecting on how much of a shame it is that their musical journey has come to an end. The music video for “Infinity Repeating” also implies that the song is about evolution—the video consists of different figures evolving as they walk until the final robotic form of the subject ends up destroying itself as the cymbals drown out the melody in a dramatic ending. So if the song is about evolution, and it may be Daft Punk’s final song ever, I can’t help but think that the track is actually about Daft Punk’s evolution. It seems to me that the nostalgic lyrics, muted ambiance, and off-the-rails ending of the track are all supposed to enable an emotional release that allows the listener, and perhaps Daft Punk themselves, to reflect on the feeling of ending Daft Punk forever. And, somehow, Daft Punk reached a level of artistic enlightenment that allowed them to write this perfect ending to their career 8 years before it actually ended.
Daft Punk also reflected more directly on their career and on the process of making Random Access Memories with the behind-the-scenes tracks that they released as part of this 10th Anniversary Edition. “GLBTM (Studio Outtakes)” provided me with a whole new perspective on “Give Life Back to Music.” Though the final version of the song is a disco/funk anthem rooted in Nile Rodgers’ guitar riff, the duo experimented at some point with strings and pianos playing roles in the album’s opening track. Similarly, “GL (Early Take),” an early version of “Get Lucky,” proved to me just how revolutionary Nile Rodgers’ iconic riff was for the making of Daft Punk’s most popular song. Though the synth groove of the track exists on this early version, it’s simply not the same without Nile Rodgers’ snappy funk guitar playing over it. The most reflective track on this release is definitely “The Writing of Fragments of Time,” where we hear Todd Edwards and Daft Punk working through the song’s lyrics while the instrumentals loop in the background for almost the entire 8 minutes. The track provides a truly eye-opening opportunity to understand how exactly the final product of Random Access Memories came to be. Personally, I was surprised by the way both Daft Punk and Edwards understood the feeling of the track first and then tried to find the most elegant words to express that shared musical apprehension. It’s a truly special experience to get to hear one of your favorite songs being made; and I only appreciate “Fragments of Time” more now as I realize the artistry, emotion, and collaboration that went into making the song what it is today.
With the 10th anniversary edition of Random Access Memories, Daft Punk also gave us some non-musical content in the form of the Memory Tapes. In these interviews, we get even more behind-the-scenes looks at Daft Punk’s mature creative process and the endless planning and collaboration which gave birth to Random Access Memories. We learn from DJ Falcon that Daft Punk was working on “Contact” some 10 years before the song’s release, and Chilly Gonzalez discusses how the robots already had the track order two to three years before the release of the album. Pharell Williams, in his interview, comments on Daft Punk’s meticulous process, describing how the duo made him record vocals for “Get Lucky” over and over again to get all of the knots out. Sound on Sound describes Random Access Memories as the “manifestation of a mind-bogglingly ambitious master plan” not only in terms of collaboration with other artists but also in terms of the physical production and recording of the album. All of these elements prove to us Daft Punk fans that by the end of their career, the duo had truly mastered the craft of music-making.
If Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition) must be the last we hear from Daft Punk, it serves as a fitting finale to the iconic electronic music duo’s industry-altering career. The album is perfectly nuanced—electronic yet human, energetic yet subtle, simple yet complex—and it truly embodies everything that Daft Punk has always been about. The robots put all of their cards on the table with this release, and in doing so, they show their true artistic maturity. This album is Daft Punk’s perfectly orchestrated endgame, and I, for one, am glad to have witnessed it.
edited by Aidan Burt.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.