Songs #514 & 515 - It's TWOsday!

Song #514 of 9999                                             Song #515 of 9999

Title: Get Lucky                                                 Title: Good Times
Artist: Daft Punk                                                Artist: Chic
Year: 2013                                                          Year: 1979
Album: Random Access Memories                    Album: Risqué

                                    

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I am quite possibly the least informed human being on the planet. Yesterday, I heard "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk for the first time. No, I do not live under a rock. No, I am not deaf and therefore physically unable to hear the song. No, I did not take a three-hour tour and end up on a deserted island with a rich couple, a couple of hot babes and an idiot. I just...I don't know...I'm conducting a Kurt Weill symphony right now! I live in a strange and complicated world.

Anyway, it doesn't matter because I already heard "Good Times" thirty years ago. I never hated disco the way people like me were supposed to. It was already fading by the time I was getting old enough to really despise a genre of music so I hated New Wave instead. In retrospect, I was wrong on both counts and it seems to me they're both tolerable, even enjoyable, in the right amounts. And now that I'm older, it's kind of fun to monitor the resurgence of styles I experienced firsthand as younger generations discover and emulate music that was produced before they were born.

Except that's not at all what happened in this case! I mean, okay, the members of Daft Punk were not even enrolled in French kindergarten (if that's such a thing) when "Good Times" was released, but they were technically alive. And singer Pharrell Williams was definitely not born, right? Wait, he's how old? Okay, Williams is 42 so he was also alive but again, not hitting the dance floor at Studio 54 so much as gym floor at PS37. (He actually grew up in Virginia Beach, but that's not as funny.)

But guess who was alive and living (clearly not the same thing!)? Famed producer and founding member of Chic, Nile Rodgers. And it's the 62-year-old Rodgers who co-wrote and plays guitar on both of these tracks. In fact, the Daft Punk record was recorded in the same New York studio where Rodgers and Chic recorded their first single. So, the next time someone says "This ain't your father's disco!", you can say "Well, yeah, actually it is."