The French DJ duo took on the Disney remake "Tron: Legacy" in 2010. Its soundtrack, featuring 22 pieces of music, climbed to No. 4 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesIt’s been a long, long wait for Daft Punk fans, and the reception to “Get Lucky,” the lead single off the band’s first non-soundtrack album in eight years — Random Access Memories — has been appropriately enthusiastic.
The catchy track, with vocals by Pharrell Williams and rhythm guitar by disco giant Nile Rodgers (of Chic fame), was unleashed at precisely 12:01 a.m. EDT on Friday. It shot directly to the top spot on the U.K. and French iTunes charts, while it reached No. 3 on the U.S. chart, behind Macklemore & Ryan Lewis‘ “Can’t Hold Us” and Pink‘s “Just Give Me a Reason.”
On Spotify, the popular music-streaming service, the song set a record, with the service saying it produced “the biggest streaming day for a single track in the U.S. and U.K.”
Even among Coachella-goers, the Indio, Calif.-based music festival in the middle of its second and final weekend, the band is a buzz machine — despite the fact that they are not even performing there this year.
Daft Punk’s total Coachella-related tweet volume for weekend one was 9,719, according to MusicMetric data reported to Billboard. That’s not quite as buzzy as Saturday night headliners Phoenix (11,775 tweets) but well ahead of Friday headliners Blur (6,527 tweets).
The band was rumored to join Phoenix onstage — but instead crowds were shocked to find R. Kelly instead, who performed on a mash-up of “Ignition (Remix)” and “1901.”
Critical reception to “Get Lucky” has been warm.
“‘Get Lucky’ is the song of the summer, and it’s still SPRING!” declares music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz, while The Guardian says the song “has an all-encompassing timelessness to it” and the L.A. Times writes of the band that their retro track sets “a mood and emotion all their own.”
Random Access Memories will be available May 21.
Williams performed the song live — three times in a row — on Friday at the HTC One concert in Brooklyn. Daft Punk, who are premiering the album on May 17 in the tiny Australian town of Wee Waa, were not in attendance.
