For years, Daft Punk has shown the world glimpses of pop music’s future. Tracks like “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” or “Human After All” broke through the surface of pop consciousness like an elusive White Whale before diving back down into the depths.
Kanye West would sample them, people would put them on their workout mix, Hollywood pegged them to write a soundtrack about a digital world, and we were happy to pigeonhole them as that band who pretend to be robots.
But when Random Access Memories burst from the foaming waves like some pop-futurist mecha-Godzilla, we were all unprepared for the carnage they wrought on us.
The robots had been studying our history—disco, girl groups, R&B, Michael Jackson—they scanned us, found our weaknesses, and created a superweapon perfectly suited for destruction through pop music. From the opening vocoder hooks of “Give Life Back to Music” to the scraping guitars and pounding of “Get Lucky,” we were powerless against Daft Punk’s invasion of Earth.
It’s all over now: humanity has lost. All hail our robot overlords.