Benjamín Carretero Hernández 29/06/25
Daft Punk (1993 – 2021) was a musical duo formed by the Frenchmen Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter.
Daft Punk, the French Duo That Changed Electronic Music Forever
The leading exponents of the style known as French House, they are also popular for their influences from synthpop music and for their performances filled with visual effects, often appearing in robot costumes.
Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo met during their high school years at Lycée Carnot in Paris. After discovering that they shared similar tastes and a passion for music, they joined forces with another classmate, Laurent Brancowitz, to create a band called Darlin’, named after a song by the Beach Boys one of their early influences which they covered and released as an EP.
This release received negative reviews, including one from Melody Maker magazine, which described the band’s style as “daft punky thrash.” However, the criticism did not discourage them. In fact, they adopted that phrase as their artistic name, thus giving birth to Daft Punk.
From that moment, the trio became a duo after Brancowitz left to join the band Phoenix. Under their new name, they began developing their musical career, incorporating elements tied to their initials into their trajectory. For example, in some of the music videos from their first album Homework (1997), they introduced symbolic elements corresponding to their name: “D” for a dog (in Da Funk), “A” for an android (in Around the World), “F” for a fireman (in Burnin’), and “T” for tomatoes (in Revolution 909).
The album, influenced by techno, house, acid house, and electro, achieved notable success in France and gradually gained popularity in other European countries. This encouraged them to release their first live album, Alive 1997, and to work on their next studio album, Discovery (2001), which leaned more towards the synthpop style a mix of disco, post-punk, krautrock, and glam rock. This album includes tracks such as Digital Love and one of their most famous songs, One More Time. It was also the album where they began appearing in space helmets, influenced by the French group Space.
This was one of the group’s most significant albums, with a visual counterpart produced in the French-Japanese animated film Interstella 5555, which tells the story of a musician who gathers other musicians from another galaxy and reprograms them to become the most popular band on Earth.
Two years later, Daft Punk released Human After All (2005), which featured successful tracks like Technologic, The Brainwasher, and Robot Rock. They embarked on an ambitious two-year world tour starting at the iconic Coachella Festival. After collaborating with rapper Kanye West on the track Stronger, they released their second live album, Alive 2007, which earned them a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Around the same time, they directed and co-wrote the film Daft Punk's Electroma (2006).
Building on their massive success, the duo continued working on new material while also composing the Tron: Legacy (2010) soundtrack for the film of the same name.
Their next project came in 2013 with the album Random Access Memories, featuring collaborations with musician and composer Pharrell Williams. The album includes tracks like Get Lucky, which won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2014.
The album also earned them four additional awards at the same ceremony: Album of the Year, Best Dance/Electronica Album, Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical).
The song Giorgio by Moroder is also included in this album, as a tribute to Italian director, producer, and DJ Giorgio Moroder.
After receiving such major accolades, the French duo collaborated with The Weeknd on the tracks Starboy and I Feel It Coming in 2016. After this, they remained inactive for several years until announcing their separation in February 2021 through a video posted on their social media titled Epilogue.
The video includes a scene from Daft Punk's Electroma, where both members are seen walking through a desert before activating a self-destruct button, symbolizing the end of Daft Punk—one of the most iconic electronic music groups of recent decades. They sold over 12 million records and earned prestigious honors, including being admitted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and individually receiving the rank of Chevalier (Knight).
