Let's Talk Daft Punk

Let's Talk Daft Punk

In the past few months, I have observed what people are saying about Daft Punk and offer up these thoughts about their critics...

• It is your fault not Daft Punk's that your expectations were raised much too high. Perhaps, Daft Punk fueled the fire, but can you blame them? You treat them almost like deities. You deserved this. They have basically played you for fools. Daft Punk are out to destroy EDM because there is absolutely no originality in it anymore.
• Daft Punk was originally a rock band. Hence, the origin of the word punk. They once had a guy from Phoenix in their band, so it any wonder they would embrace human music again.
• Disco was the original dance music and what they are saying: let's press reset on dance music because computers are horrible instruments because they cannot convey emotion. The music Skrillex, Deadmau5, Swedish House Mafia seem to have no sense of any structure including the ability to actually think about the music. 
• One of the great quotes I heard was Daft Punk grew tired of being copied. Deadmau5 had even tried to copy the blueprint exactly of their sampling machine. What a douchebag. Daft Punk are essentially saying, you copied everything else, try to copy this.  The fans criticizing this album have become more boisterous possibly because they see Daft Punk's new approach to dance music as a threat to changing their favorite artist's music.
• Critics also fail to understand that we have a point in the history of music that sometimes a type of music must take a step back to move forward. Everything old becomes new again. For example, what about that pesky synthesizer? It made a prominent return in recent years, then why not disco? The Strokes did it with 70's cool punk like the Velvet Underground, then why not disco? 
• I can now see Julian Casablancas kinship with Daft Punk. Both had a groundbreaking, age defining 2001 album. Both seem to seek to move their music as far away from that sound as possible. They seem to feel too defined by that and if it were anyone else, they could get away with it. Yet, fans and critics alike, want to have their cake and eat it too. They want an era defining experience like that album, but they want them to recreate that sound too. Lightning only strikes once and that age defining experience is also a product of the times. You release that album now and it doesn't even make a dent in our collective psyche because times are different, conditions are different, this country's different, people are different. Daft Punk had to do something completely different or they would have never put anything out to begin with. 
• Going along with this is the idea that the music in this album is simple, too simple. Anybody could have done it. They are dead wrong on that point too. I heard Get Lucky used hundreds and hundreds of takes before the song was finally put together. 
• These songs are very good and very diverse. It sounds much like a labor of love for the members of Daft Punk. They know about all these people from the 70's and 80's and think they are being lost in the shuffle. At first, I felt they wanted to just kill EDM because all they did was copy them, but instead I understood their greater mission here. Daft Punk is out to kill the computer. No longer do they want dj's by themselves in hotel rooms creating albums. Get your fucking ass in the studio and surround  yourself with actual musicians.
• Finally, Daft Punk really does not give a shit. In interviews leading up to the album, they basically said EDM artists like Deadmau5 suck and they would never listen to them. Looks like Daft Punk will get the last laugh anyway after shattering Spotify records left and right. Sometimes your album succeeds despite what the critics say.
• Of course, this is only my opinion and I could be wrong.