E3 - Dissecting "Around The World" by Daft Punk

We're going to start today's episode with a quiz. It's about Daff Punk's 1997 hit Around the World and its iconic robotic refrain. You know, this one. Now if you had to guess, how many times do you think Daff Punk repeats the phrase "around the world" in this 7-minute track? Is it A 94 times, B 67 times, or C 144 times? Remarkably, almost impossibly, the answer is C 144 times. In fact, in a comprehensive study of 15,000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, Daff Punk's "around the world" was named the most repetitive hit song of all time. It is not just the lyric. But instrumental itself is built from only a handful of loops, repeated and recombined across the song's 7-minute run time. So the question is this, how did Daff Punk pull it off? How did they turn extreme repetition, something that should and theory alienate listeners, into one of the most iconic hit songs of the 1990s? Well, as we'll see, the answer is in the details. Because what initially sounds like mindless repetition is in fact precise and intentional design, and once uncovered, the track is actually far less repetitive than it seems. For the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Cole Kushner, this is Dicec, and today our season-long exploration of Daff Punk continues with a deep dive into their timeless hit "around the world." Next on Bandai Sekt, we explored 1997's homework in its theme of Daff Punk as self-described students, learning from the masters of house and techno music. We also traced the history of those genres to their roots in disco music, when underground DJs in Chicago and Detroit were adding their own electronic drums behind loops of disco records. And that intersection, loops and disco is what's at the heart of around the world. But the song is unique on homework in that it doesn't rely on samples for its loops. Rather, the track is Daff Punk's attempt at composing a disco record from scratch, with loops they compose themselves. Tomas said, "around the world was like making a chic record with a talk box and just playing the bass on the synthesizer, since we couldn't afford to have Nile Rogers just do it." Sheik is, of course, one of the best disco bands of all time, founded by legendary musicians Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards. The group is known for their impeccable musicianship, including Edwards's infectuously groovy baselines. Here's Edwards playing one of the most influential baselines in music history on Sheik's biggest hit, Good Times. As you listen, notice how it alternates between very simple, straight notes and intricate, busy fills. This baseline inspired countless baselines after it, including ones heard in a number of hit songs. Tiger Hill Gangs influential 1997 track "Rapper's Delight," hip-hop's first hit song, samples the bass line directly. Queen's bassist John Deacon also said the Good Times baseline inspired his on 1980s another one bites the dust. Of course there's also the baseline on "Around the World," which isn't a direct sample or even interpolation of Good Times, but is clearly an homage, alternating as it does between simple, straight notes and a long, intricate fill straight out of Bernard Edwards' school of bass. As Tomah revealed in the quote we read earlier, this baseline wasn't actually played on a bass guitar, rather it was programmed on a synthesizer, modeled to sound like a bass guitar. This baseline is one of just a handful of parts that can prize around the world, and how I'd like to proceed with our analysis of the track is by indexing each one of these parts individually, then show how daft punk mix, match, and modify these parts to create their seven minute track. So along with the main baseline we just heard, there's a second, busier, even funcier baseline, also played on the synth. So those are two baselines. The track also has two main drum beats, both composed with sounds from the Lindrum and Roland TR909 drum machines. The first drum beat is a straight up disco beat, four on the floor kick drum and big open high hats on the up beats. The second drum beat is very similar, only the big open high hats are closed, playing straight eighth notes. At one point in the song we'll also hear a tambourine. So those are main percussion parts, two drum beats and a tambourine. Let's now move on to the synthesizers. The lead synth has a kind of bouncy quality, and it plays this descending riff. There's also a subtle synth part that sounds like a guitar with a wawa pedal, which again feels like daft punk attempting to emulate a disco guitar player. Later in the song there's a third synth part, a descending legato sequence, the only part with harmony or two notes playing simultaneously. Now the final instrument of around the world is the star of the show, the robotic voice, which as you now know, resides the three word song title exactly 144 times. This was created by what's called a talk box. Developed in the 1960s, a talk box is literally a small metal box that contains a tiny but powerful speaker inside. An instrument like a synth or guitar is plugged into the box, and the speaker inside forces the sound of the instrument through a long plastic tube that runs from the box to the player's mouth, where you shape the sound with your lips and tongue, making it sound like your instrument is talking. Stevie Wonder was an early adopter of the talk box, famously helping to introduce it to the public during his appearance on the David Frost show in 1972. Around the world, daft punk most likely ran their Juno 106 synthesizer into the talk box, where they would have played this riff on the synthesizer, while Tomah mouthed the words around the world, around the world. And while it's not the actual recording, there is a video of Tomah in the studio playing around on a talk box in 2002, and at one point he jokingly starts to sing around the world, claiming us a glimpse of how it was actually recorded. Alright so to recap the individual parts and around the world, we have two drum parts and a tambourine, two bass lines, three synth parts and a talk box. Now you can think of these like pieces of modular furniture, units designed to lock together in different configurations, because that's exactly how daft punk used these parts, mixing and matching them to build a compelling 7 minute track that's far less repetitive than it first appears. Let's now start to track exactly how they do this starting with the intro. Now to create this intro, daft punk isolated the tail end of the main bass line and looped it. Now let's crop out just that descending riff and loop it. Functionally this section of the bass line is written as a transitional fill, a phrase designed to bridge the part back to its starting point. On its own, it's very unstable. There's nothing solid to latch onto. It simply generates forward motion, but when that motion is looped over and over, it creates anticipation, which is exactly what you want at the start of a dance track. You build tension so that when the main section finally drops, it feels like a release. To intensify this effect, daft punk plays a low pass filter over the intro, an effect that strips away the high frequencies and mutes the sound, as if the track is playing for behind a wall. And as we'll hear next, daft punk gradually opened the low pass filter, allowing brightness to slowly seep back in. It's like a blurry image coming into focus, and when paired with the inherent tension of the bass loop, it creates mounting and anticipation. Okay, so I purposely cut this off just before the drop. And hopefully you feel that tension, like the feeling you get just before you sneeze. Now let's hear the payoff. When after 30 seconds of build, the beat finally kicks in with full clarity. It feels good, right? So there's just three elements here now. The disco beat, the main bass line, and the bouncy synth. As we just heard, this combination plays through two full cycles before a new combination appears. At this moment, that new combination is simple. They add the was synth into the existing loop. Obviously not the biggest change, but at this point in the song, a big change isn't needed. We're still enjoying being locked into the groove after the tension and release of the intro. Now after two cycles of this new combination, another element is added to the mix. And this begins to reveal the song's central organizing principle because around the world doesn't have a typical verse chorus structure, but rather it's organized in these two unit cycles. Every two cycles, a change is made, either large or small. That new combination is then played for two cycles, then another change is made. This two cycle rule sustains the entire song, but it's so subtle that it never becomes predictable. In fact, I never even noticed it until tediously mapping out every part of the song for this episode. And here's what's really cool about this. Daft Punk never repeat the same two cycle combination of sounds in the entire seven minute track. Musicians listening right now will understand the magnitude of that statement, but for those of you who don't make music, just know this is not easy at all. Most songs repeat entire sections more or less verbatim, sometimes multiple times in the song. So to create what is essentially a seven minute instrumental song without repetition using just a handful of elements is a feat, one that was surely intentional on Daft Punk's part. To me, the song's construction feels like an inside joke in that it's deeply repetitive in its materials, but never repetitive in its structure. That paradox is around the world's unspoken thesis and its technical brilliance. So having revealed this skeleton key to the song, let's continue to track these never repeating two cycle combinations. The next change is another simple addition to the existing mix. This time it's the talk box. (upbeat music) Once you understand the song's paradoxical relationship with repetition, the phrase around the world starts to feel tongue and cheek, a nod to its loop based construction. Each part cycles endlessly like planets and orbit. People move around the world, the world moves around the sun while spinning on its own axis. The very order of the solar system is loops within loops within loops, just like the song. Now after two cycles of this new combination, the drums change from the disco beat to the closed high happy. It's a somewhat lateral move that decreases the dynamics just a tad. Well here's just the tail end of that cycle before the next more dramatic change. When everything drops out, accept the disco drum beat and the bass line. (upbeat music) I wouldn't call this a breakdown, but it's definitely the first dynamic decline of the song. Until this point, parts were being added. This is the first big subtraction. This creates the opportunity to build the song back up, which is exactly what happens in the next set of cycles. The around the world talk box returns with the closed hat drum part, which is followed by the biggest change of the song yet. For the first time, the bass line switches to the busier funk part, infusing the track with additional energy, accompanied by the disco drum beat and the return of both the bouncy synth and wassand. This is the dynamic peak of the song so far. (upbeat music) Having earned their way to this peak, Daphpunk ride it out nearly verbatim for another two cycles. However, careful listeners will notice that they do make a subtle addition, keeping consistent with at least one change every two cycles. This time is the Tamarine, which shows up here as it's only appearance in the entire song. See if you can hear it in the background. (upbeat music) All right, so by now it's likely you're getting an idea about how this song is constructed with these different modular two cycle units. I'm not going to walk through every single one, but I definitely would suggest listening to the entire song with this in mind, noticing how they use all these different combinations to create dynamic highs and lows and tell an engaging seven minute musical story that never loses your attention. It's a fascinating song that is again, intentionally paradoxical in its construction, using extreme repetition at the micro level while being not at all repetitive at the macro level. This concept actually became the creative inspiration for the song's iconic music video directed by Michelle Gondry. Gondry recognized the song's loop based construction, saying, quote, "I realized how genius and simple the music was, "only five different instruments with very few patterns, "each to create numerous possibilities of figures, "always using the repetition "and stopping just before it's too much," unquote. Gondry's video quite literally brings the song's loops to life. Each of the tracks, five instruments, drums, bass, synth, guitar-like synth and talkbox are represented by a different group of characters, each performing choreography that mirrors their specific musical role. The bass appears as a group of large muscular men. The bouncy synth is represented by synchronized swimmers. The drums take center stage as mummies. The guitar-like synth becomes skeletons and the talkbox, of course, is embodied by robots. Also, you'll notice that the stage itself is circular, reinforcing the looping nature of the music will also evoke a spinning vinyl record. Watch closely and you'll see that every character's movement is locked precisely to their individual musical part. For example, the bass characters climb three large steps, mirroring the bass lines three ascending notes. Then they quickly descend down smaller steps, a visual translation of the busy fill that loops the bass line back to its beginning. (upbeat music) Like the song, Gondrie's video is meticulously designed yet deceptively simple, almost homemade in appearance. The choreography is a composite of individual parts. Each character performing its own loop, locking together to form a hole. It's a perfect visual expression of the song's modular design. The around the world video also marks the first time Daft Punk paired robots with a robotic voice. It wasn't a deliberate statement at the time, but it did subtly foreshadow the transformation that would soon change everything about how Daft Punk presented themselves to the world. More on that right after the break. Daft Punk's homework was released to the public on January 20th, 1997. But as we documented last episode, the album was self-funded and created in Thomas Bedroom Studio, despite a number of major labels wanting to sign the duo off the strength of their single Daft Punk. This was by design. Thomas and Gimon didn't want a polished studio sound. They wanted to maintain the underground approach of the house and techno scenes they loved. Famously, Thomas and Gimon didn't even have studio monitors. Instead, running their mixes into a ghetto blaster boombox that Thomas got as a kid. With the logic being that if it sounded good on that, it would sound good on anything. Thomas told Mix Magazine at the time, quote, "We're very keen on recording in the bedroom, not going to studios. It was very seductive to do that with a major company, all the more if it goes on the charts or whatever. You can do some really low-fi stuff with two drum machines and an old synthesizer and put it out on a major label. That's seductive as well, playing with the rules. When we started, it was more economic. We didn't have the money. But now it's the reason in itself. We do it because we want to, unquote." It wasn't until homework was essentially complete that daft punk signed a deal with Virgin Records in September of '96. But this wasn't a typical major label deal. As Tomon Gimon leveraged their bidding war to land a unique artist-friendly contract. Rather than signing away ownership, they licensed homework to Virgin through their own imprint daft records. They also established dedicated creative and production arms, daft art, and daft house to maintain control over their visual identity. Virgin handled manufacturing, promotion, and global distribution, but the music, the imagery, and the creative decisions were all owned by Daft Punk, who were also self-managed at the time. Tomas said, quote, "We like to think we give ourselves more control, although we could be wrong. Managing ourselves isn't a problem because we've known each other since we are 14. And we've discovered that a lot of bands that we like from the 60s and 70s that were on major labels had a lot done to their songs without their consent. We don't want anyone telling us how to make music," unquote. In the late 1990s, at the peak of major label power, this level of autonomy was almost unheard of, especially for a new act. And Daft Punk would never waver from this model, maintaining both business and creative independence for their entire career. Now, along with homework, Virgin and Daft Punk re-released a funk as a single with broader distribution, and importantly, a Spike Jones directed music video. The video received regular MTV Airplay during a time when music videos really mattered, introducing Daft Punk to a much wider audience. - You live in a neighborhood? - Yes, for about a month. - I'm sorry I'm wasting my time, sir. We can only serve a permanent resident. - Oh, but I'm staying. It is permanent. - Notably, the video treats defunct less like a conventional music video and more like a short film, using the track as a score to a story about a dog wandering the streets of New York, often dipping the music beneath dialogue. It's the kind of approach that rarely would have survived a traditional major label approval process. But this was the freedom Daft Punk earned for themselves. Their very first video was presented as art, not a hard album sales pitch. And that creative risk is a big reason to funk's video still stands as a classic of the music video's Golden Age. - Hey, are you re-night thing yet? - No, not really. - I'm gonna go downtown, you wanna come with me to my shoes at Art Punk's? - Yeah. - Sure. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Now another notable thing about the videos for both to funk and around the world is that they didn't feature Tomah or Gimond. In fact, none of the five music videos for homework did. And as Daft Punk's profile heightened around the world off the success of homework, Tomah and Gimond increasingly receded from putting their faces in the limelight. Instead, the two started routinely wearing masks and photo shoots, where they would don everything from clown faces to alien heads, hockey masks, frog faces, or really anything cheap they could find on their way to a photo shoot. For Tomah and Gimond, this was their way to remain somewhat anonymous, preferring to let the music speak for itself as much as possible. Gimond told Melody Maker, quote, "We're totally against any star system. To us, it's the opposite to how we are." We're producers, not performers, unquote. Tomah added, quote, "I hope people will check out the album. We're really happy to talk about the music, but we're fed up with the rock and roll attitude thing where writers want to delve into your personality." That's why we've done most photo shoots for magazines wearing masks. The music is more important than our faces, or what we wear, or what we like for dessert. And it stands up very well on its own, I think, unquote. Along with the electronic voice and robot imagery in around the world, these early masks foreshadowed Daft Punk's eventual transformation into robots just a few years later. Importantly though, we shouldn't mistake Daft Punk's preference for anonymity or their bedroom approach to musical production for a desire for their music to remain underground. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Daft Punk from the very beginning wanted to reach as many people as possible. It's just they wanted to do it on their own terms. Gimon explained, quote, "We don't want to compromise ourselves. We just want to reach people." The ideas we have are totally against the keep it underground thing. People think once it's gone over ground, you lose control, it gets spoiled. We want to show that you don't lose anything, unquote. The success of homework was the first proof of concept in an entire career that proved this statement to be true. The album was met with generally positive critical reviews. It sold well and it attracted the attention of a number of big name artists that wanted it to work with Daft Punk, including Madonna, Janet Jackson, and George Michael. The duo would politely decline all such requests. Instead, Daft Punk focused on the live show, The Daft and Direct War, which spanned the US and Europe for the majority of 1997. Not just a standard DJ set that included their own tracks. The Daft and Direct War was a proper live instrumental performance where they set up their home studio equipment on stage and recreated and remixed tracks off homework live on the spot, never duplicating the same show twice. (upbeat music) After 1997's Daft and Direct War, things slowed down for Daft Punk. With Tomah and Gimman taking some time to manage their respective indie record labels, and of course, gear up for their next project. However, no account of Daft Punk in the late '90s would be complete without mentioning how Tomah inadvertently stumbled into making one of the biggest dance hits of all time, a song with one of the most unlikely backstories you'll ever hear behind a hit record. (upbeat music) ♪ I need you to just gotta wait ♪ This is 1998's Music Sounds Better With You by Star Dust. A trio composed of Tomah and his friends, DJ Alan Brax and vocalist Benjamin Diamond. The story goes that Brax ran into Tomah at a club in Paris and gave him a demo for the first song he ever made called Vertigo. Tomah liked the track so much he released it on its indie label Rulie. Brax was then invited to play a live set at a club and didn't want to play it alone. So he invited Tomah and his friend, Benjamin Diamond, to play with him. Their set fell short of the required time by five minutes so they decided to produce a new original track to fill the time. Sifting through a number of vinyls looking for a sample, they eventually stumbled on the introduction of 1981's "Apply Title" track called Fate by disco funk legend, ShakaCon. (upbeat music) The trio took just a single measure from this passage. (upbeat music) And then pitched it up, added some flanger effect and looped it. (upbeat music) This single measure sample becomes the basis for the entire six and a half minute track. It's supported by an original bass line played on a synthesizer. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) A Rhodes keyboard that doubles the original keyboard in the sample. (upbeat music) And of course, a 909 drum beat. (upbeat music) Now let's hear how this all comes together with Benjamin Diamond's highly processed vocal part, which, like around the world, repeats a single refrain throughout the entire track. (upbeat music) Structurally, music sounds better with you as Tomas fingerprints all over it, following homework's blueprint of making a lot from a little, stretching these handful of elements across an infectious, highly repetitive, but never monotonous, six and a half minutes. The song was released in July of '98, became an immediate global hit. It reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, charted across Europe, and became one of the defining records of the French house movement. Over time, its reputation has only grown, routinely named one of the best dance songs of all time by outlets like pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and NME. But perhaps the most unique part of the song's story is what happened after its massive success, because Stardust was offered a record contract from Virgin Worth a reported $3 million, which in today's money is about $6 million, and who turns down $6 million? Well, the same guy who turned down collaborations with Madonna and Janet Jackson. The same guy who didn't jump at the first major label deal offered to Daffpunk. The same guy who preferred to keep himself anonymous and make his art the central focus, not money or fame. In line with these values, Toma and the rest of Stardust didn't want to make an album just to make one, as the group never was meant to be anything other than a brief side quest. They also liked the idea of preserving the magic of music sounds better with you, being a single, self-contained moment undaluted by a cash-crap album. And so the song remains to this day, the first and only release from Stardust, a band whose legacy remains among the most unique in music history. Now, as for Daffpunk proper, Toma and Gimond went dark for a few years, at least publicly. But behind the scenes, they were back in the bedroom studio, this time with more gear and more ambition. Toma had described homework as more or less a collection of tracks that documented their studies of house and techno. But now Daffpunk were no longer students, and they were thinking bigger about what their next project could be. This time, they wanted something intentional, something experiential. Specifically, they wanted to capture the magic of discovering music as a child, the sense that every song opened a new world and turned that feeling into both a narrative and a soundtrack, one that literally scored a full length animated film. Indeed, Daffpunk were reaching for something truly extraordinary. And when they finally re-emerged in 2001, they returned with an album that not only fulfilled their vision, was an album that completely altered the direction of popular music in the 21st century. (upbeat music) This is, of course, Daff Punk's Masterpiece Discovery. An album will begin to examine "Notepi Note" sampled by Sample. Next time, on Dicec.