Most Euphoric Summer Songs? Yes, "Digital Love" is Exactly That.
Once upon a time, Daft Punk oiled their robot joints and delivered one of the most euphoric songs with “Digital Love”.
Long ago in 2001 in the faraway galaxy of France, some simple robot folk decided they wanted to feel like how humans feel, and maybe better than how humans feel. This android brotherhood called Daft Punk created the concept album, Discovery, and in that glittery orb of synth wonderment and euphoric music made for rollerblading on Ecstasy, they birthed the song “Digital Love”.
Anyone in the year 2001 between the ages of say, six and 97 remembers the song “One More Time”. It was an international Club hit. It deserved every second of airplay it received. It still makes me want to empty all the toilet paper off a roll so I can sing into a cardboard tube like an auto-tuned mic.
But “Digital Love” was the song with a sound so carefree, it turned every molecule in your body into a bright electric starburst. “Digital Love” is a space taxi, carrying you from one star to the next, no destination. It is a mood enhancer, a grief melter – it is the glow of a dancefloor fused into a sound by atmosphere alchemists.
The robots done good.
No, I didn’t post two links by mistake — the music video is exquisite, but if you want to listen while you read, play the Spotify link.
I notice with almost every other major music blog or Instagram account that they’re always on the hunt for the next good song. They’re like the Hunter from Jumanji, hacking through jungles of song and hanging vines of Indie artist playlists.
It’s great – I’m a new music fiend myself, but my metaphor is more like I’m droopy-eared and bumbling through the woods of Spotify with my stubby bloodhound legs and howling when I scare a new song up a tree, just like in “Where the Red Fern Grows”. But in this scenario, nobody dies and children who read it aren’t traumatized for life.
But I’m absolutely terrified that kids born in the late 90’s or after a certain time will miss some incredible music just because it wasn’t released last week. My parameters for writing material aren’t whether it’s brand new or old -- last week I did Khruangbin’s new album released a couple of days prior, and the day before that I did “The Heist” by Rival Sons, released nine years ago. The parameter is that it brings Atmosphere to a scene, and hopefully the reader empathizes with the sensation of immersion in a moment.
That’s why it’s so important that the euphoria of “Digital Love” is discussed, listened to, and absorbed into the bloodstream, straight to the brain, to forever alter the dopamine receptors. Like crack cocaine, but much more nutritious. And it’s absolutely baffling that no one, not even Daft Punk themselves, has returned to emulate the sound of this sweet chunk of Club House space bliss.
From the “One More Time” video, the Daft Punk Live-in-Space House Band.
It’s not an obscure summer song. It was on one of the biggest House albums of the year, with a full visual story accompaniment, on a tracklist with “One More Time”, one of the most played Club songs of the decade. It was in Gap ad campaigns and made cameos in terrible MTV shows. It sounds like the way a cloud feels after drifting around an afternoon sky with a blunt in its mouth. I don’t have the visual proof, but…
I’m pretty sure this is what the Beatles listened to when they dropped Acid – French Robot House music.
My scientific analysis as an Archaeologist of Sound is that “Digital Love” has fallen into a generational music crevice. It’s not old enough to be a Classic and it’s not new enough to be stumbled upon on a random playlist. It needs support and gentle encouragement to work its way back onto summer beach driving playlists, and road trips, and hotel wedding after-parties where everyone accidentally ends up naked.
I didn’t pick “Digital Love” just for being a great euphoric song. I picked it because it’s an incredible summer song. There’s the distinction.
It grows in summer like ivy, plants itself in the pleasure center of the brain, and climbs your wall of memory.
Here, now, in the current battles for equality in the U.S., I am a deep and endless proponent for music that floods the system with fresh oxygen and ventilates the toxins. “Digital Love” does that, full immersion in a clean sonic high.
I walk out of my apartment tomorrow and I see a 17-year-old with headphones dancing euphorically in the street – I won’t be for sure which song they’ve just discovered, but I’ll have a pretty good idea.
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Artist Links:
Daft Punk Website
Daft Punk’s dormant Instagram
Songs by Daft Punk to get you bothered:
Robot Rock
Around The World
The visual album for “Discovery”
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