Happy 25th Anniversary to Daft Punk’s debut album Homework, originally released January 20, 1997.
Somewhere in my early 20s, in a parallel universe, a scintillating soundtrack still spins. At its core throbs a perpetual propulsion—the boundless verve of fervent youth.
With their 1997 debut Homework, a then-unknown French duo managed the unimaginable. At the far end of a decade bustling with blips, glitches, and other electronic etches, Daft Punk divined a head trip of unfettered vision—delectable to raver kids and living-room loungers alike. Perhaps even more impressive, the creators—nascent adults themselves—cultivated a powerful digital vernacular, galvanizing something fundamentally human that taps into our primal, spiritual, and musical tendencies and twirls them into one.
In terms of socializing my sophomore and junior years of college, the time of Homework’s release, my friend circles were among the more jumbled, a web of connections spanning different life phases, schools, and backgrounds, and invariably diverse musical tastes. The Cure to Madonna to Sleater-Kinney. But, somehow, Homework emerged a unifying principle—a glittering go-to record radiating its machine glow aura in seemingly all friends’ dwellings. The antecedent to everything from weed-lidded, 50-cent-ride evenings at the Santa Cruz boardwalk to crimson-lit cobblestoned late nights in Europe to impromptu house dance parties in LA, Daft Punk became synonymous with fun.
Homework had us all equally rapt—our minds tickled by its taut dichotomies, perhaps themselves trappings intrinsic to any duo: Slick yet gritty, chaotic yet clean, erratic yet predictable.
Eventually topping charts across Australia, Europe, and North America, Daft Punk had awakened some tacit magic around the world.
And let’s just start there, for those who haven’t yet had the privilege. Meet Homework’s second single, “Around the World,” in all its axon-activating joy. Indulgently repetitious, echoing the phrase “around the world” precisely 144 times like some soothing vocoded mantra, the song rallies the collective as together we teetered toward the turn of the millennium.
“Around the World” spooled the energies of our increasingly global, connected society. On the heels of the major-label 1997 rerelease of “Da Funk,” a track that debuted as a 12-inch two years prior, “Around the World” was Daft Punk’s second-consecutive single to sashay to position one on several continents’ dance charts.
Despite the duo’s unassailable talents, commercial success was a multiyear journey. They’d been steadily amassing a fanbase since 1993, the year Parisians Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo became Daft Punk. Not yet 20 years old, the two long-time friends had abandoned previous indie rock project Darlin’, in favor of turntables, samplers, and drum machines.
Although inspired by the experimental glamour of club culture, Daft Punk drew from a broad array of influences, including Serge Gainsbourg, Primal Scream, Television, Stevie Wonder, disco, funk, hip-hop, rap, pop and underground house/techno—just to a name few.
In fact, the band’s first single, released in 1994, “The New Wave,” which would later reappear refashioned as “Alive” on Homework, even flirts with an industrial feel that could easily slink its way into a fishnet-laced subterranean den.
Undoubtedly, this confluence of styles lent to Daft Punk’s universal appeal. It wasn’t just the immense variety, but their easy ability to foster immediacy. Despite their synthesized, futuristic robot-faced dynamic, there’s something inherently accessible, even intimate, about their sound, perhaps the byproduct of their preferred home recording setup.
“We have received faxes from Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Japan, New York whereas we sold 15,000 discs!” Bangalter said in a 1995 interview. “So, it is very funny. But also really shows that, at the same time, there is a public, there are people who are interested in this music everywhere. And we can reach [them] by making things in our bedroom, reach people [at] the other end of the Earth.”
Encouraged by the rising triumph of “Da Funk,” Daft Punk enlisted nightclub DJ and promoter Pedro Winter as their band manager and ultimately signed to Virgin Records, jumping from the smaller Soma Quality Recordings where they’d gotten their start, in hopes of reaching a wider audience.
All parties involved, including the artists themselves, had more than an inkling of Daft Punk’s potential. Homework flowed from them organically—a necessary eruption that had likely been brewing for years.
Tucked into Bangalter’s modestly outfitted home studio, the two set about making more singles. But, after just five months of casual composition, they’d devised ample material for an album. Without intending to, the young Daft Punk had far surpassed their original goal. Instead of concocting another couple hits—a feat in and of itself—they’d effortlessly minted a 74-minute masterpiece.
Daft Punk had purposefully traded their derivative fuzzy rock sound for electronic expression, and, in dashing off Homework, it quickly became clear they didn’t need to learn this new language—they already owned it.
Twenty-five years later, the French house breakthrough album still sounds bold, flawless, and compellingly quirky.
For the swelling storm of energy it impels, Daft Punk’s music is focused, lean, and deliberate, deriving its magnetism, at least in part from its repetition. “We could decorate our music with a lot of sounds that do not fulfill any function,” reflected Bangalter in a 2010 interview. “Then people would not complain that it is monotonous. But it is the monotony that gives the songs their power. A ta-ta-ta-tam that is played over and over again never sounds exactly the same. The brain perceives it differently each time. The arrangements that we put effort into do not appear until you have gotten into the rhythm properly.”
These rhythmic properties reveal themselves right from the album’s start. The compact “Daftendirekt” opens Homework, playfully building—similar to “Around the World”—around the sole line: “Da funk back to the punk, c’mon.” Borrowed from a Belgian performance in 1995, the track seems an animated entity. More than just inviting the listener to engage, Daft Punk have an innate ability to conjure living atmosphere—something meant to fuse with human emotion and movement to ultimately engender some greater power.
“Even 15 years ago when we were having our studio on the stage, and all these drum machines and all these synthesizers, I think we were already asking ourselves the relevancy of live music that we’re playing by activating [and] triggering [devices]—where we seemed to be more operators of a system, you know?” remarked Bangalter in a 2009 interview. “Where it’s the machines that play. It’s maybe transforming what seems to be a very mechanical reproduction into an emotional connection. Or a physical one. That maybe puts us into the role of an artist. It’s interesting to see how much emotion you can get out of a machine, in that sense.”
The funky vibrancy of “Daftendirekt” offers a malleable entrance to Homework, paving the way for a variety of freeing feelings and tantalizing tempos. After “WDPK 83.7 FM,” a half-minute sampled bit, the album launches into two exuberant singles, “Revolution 909” and “Da Funk.” The former kicks off with the voices of law enforcement breaking up a party—an all-too-common, highly unwelcome sound of our youth, which serves well to defiantly light the dance floor afire.
From here, Daft Punk offer track after track of hypnotic energy, allowing our minds and bodies to cathartically commingle. And as much as I enjoy the bouncy singles from Homework, with “Around the World” being my unequivocal favorite, I’ve long been partial to the more understated tracks like “Phoenix,” “High Fidelity,” and “Alive,” which boast their own brand of euphoric release. It’s in this dreamier vein, I most acutely feel the liberating invincibility of being 19 and 20. And although life is always moving and I have no desire to return to any past age, I like to picture that parallel universe where my juvenile self still rambles—an unhinged soul electrically charged, hurtling with abandon, chasing the endless beauty of the cosmos.
Sadly, I must note that Daft Punk dissolved last year in yet another unsettling pandemic-era blow. To officially announce their ending, they released Epilogue, a poignant video featuring lyrics from Random Access Memories (2013) song “Touch”: “Hold on, if love is the answer, you're home.” Though heartbreaking, it’s a fitting conclusion—for as much as Daft Punk urged us to move, they also reminded us to meld.
And, in this eternal spirit, I truly believe Daft Punk are shimmying away in alternate privileged galaxies, delighting new creatures with fresh formulations every bit as persuasive as their gift to us humans on Earth—Homework.
LISTEN: