From the 15-second Saturday Night Live clips, to the instrumental teases in the Creators series, to the extended Coachella trailer, Daft Punk‘s “Get Lucky” has experienced one of the slowest, most tedious roll-outs in recent memory.
It didn’t help, either, that the French House duo’s rabid fans began remixing the snippets into oblivion, resulting in dozens of highly believable full-length versions and rather innovative mash-ups to pass the time. Each day, there was a new “leak” posted by the most prestigious of music blogs and news outlets—only to be debunked hours later.
But now, we’ve stayed up all night to get lucky—and it’s finally arrived on iTunes.
Ironically, despite the feverish hype, “Get Lucky” is an incredibly casual, laid-back disco groove destined to become one of the summer’s defining sounds: Gliding across a shimmering, instantly recognizable Nile Rodgers guitar riff and a light electronica pulsation courtesy of the robots, Pharrell lays on his velvety smooth, if not slightly off-key vocals across the track. “We’ve come too far to give up who we are,” he croons. It’s Earth, Wind & Fire in 2013, basically.
But it’s those final two minutes, as the distorted robo-voices come gurgling into the speakers (“we’re up all night to get lucky,” repeated ad nauseum), that the song morphs into a signature Daft Punk track, evoking classic robo-moments like “One More Time” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”
Daft Punk’s latest disco groove isn’t entirely a major sonic revolution: If anything, it’s a glaring rejection of what electronica’s largely become today: No EDM drops. No dubstep breakdowns. That, in and of itself, makes the track a standout.
“Get Lucky (feat. Pharrell)” was released on April 19. (iTunes)