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Who Explained The Genius Of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" Better? Owen Pallett vs. Chilly Gonzales

A sonic logic comparison between two savants on two robots.

Nearly a month ago, experimental musician (and all-around maestro) Owen Pallett wrote an article, titled "Ecstatic Melodic Copulation: Explaining The Genius Of Daft Punk’s 'Get Lucky'—using music theory." Naturally, the internet exploded in ecstatic retweet copulation, as Pallett's breakdown was hyper-intelligent and didactic while still maintaining a sense of humor.

It was an all around great idea, but a few weeks later, piano-man and actual collaborator on Random Access Memories, Chilly Gonzales, released his own music theory breakdown of the hit, except he filmed his explanation in front of a piano. While both are amazing examples of how the internet can be used to discuss art in an engaging way, we have to ask: who broke down the gettin' down of Daft Punk better? Let's explore:

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Chilly Gonzales's Breakdown

Pros: 

Chilly filmed himself at a piano: This was appreciated for a multitude of reasons. One, for those who aren't musically inclined, it's tough to conceptualize what exactly an A Aeolian scale sounds like, even when Pallett explains it so succinctly. Chilly's tapping out chord patterns and scales on the keys as he's highlighting why they were good choices was very clear and kept us hooked on the screen longer. Plus, he's obviously got fire fingers—the dude can play.

Explanation of the ostinato bass line: While Pallett covers every theoretical ground (and then some) he did miss one bit of sonic speculation that was arguably the most interesting tidbit of Gonzales' video. The piano player brought viewers through how Daft Punk maintain the same bass line through the entirety of "Get Lucky," a music strategy called ostinato—"an Italian thing," says Chilly—that allows the voice of Pharrell to determine the structure of the song.

He compares "Get Lucky" to other Daft Punk songs: One shining moment of the three-and-a-half-minute clip is early on when he points out that Daft Punk recycled the same four chords from "Around The World" to compose "Get Lucky." It's an interesting addition that I would have never noticed until brought through it with a pro.

Cons:

His introduction: "Hello, I'm Chilly Gonzales, the musical genius." Man, we know you're good, but come on. #facepalm

It's extremely broad in some parts: For a video series titled "Pop Masterclass," this felt a little to Music Theory 101 to me. In one moment, Gonzales describes the rythm as just "something you can hear in the air" (whoaaa slow down), and in his description of the song's 'perfect' chorus, he simply describes the overlapping of pre-chorus hook and chorus hook as "pleasing and catchy." We may not know music theory, but we can handle something a little bit denser than that, bud.

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He doesn't talk about his collaboration with Daft Punk: Though this video was meant to focus on "Get Lucky," and Chilly collaborated with the robots on "Within" (as detailed in our doc above), it still would have been cool if he brought any personal experiences he had with the group to elucidate or further his reasoning on why he thinks they are smarter than every other pop group out there. Any little anecdote would have made him feel like more of an authority, as he has had a direct peak into their creation process.

Owen Pallett's Breakdown

Pros

Owen Pallett is a maestro, and never explicitly says so: Sure, I'm pretty familiar with Pallett's background in music—arranging strings for Arcade Fire, the brainy weirdness of Final Fantasy, and so on—but read this essay once and it's clear that this dude has clocked some hours in front of theory textbooks. My favorite part might be the footnote at the end where he gets really bookish and defends why he ommitted "mentions of added-7's in my chord descriptions" just in case there are any sticklers out there. He salvages that geekiness with the quip "omitted for irrelevance," at least.

He Compares The Theory Behind "Get Lucky" To Other Songs: While Chilly compared the chord repetition of the hit to another Daft Punk song, Pallett's breakdown was amazing in that he illustrated to readers where Daft Punk's sonic logic has also appeared in the pop charts. For example, he mentions that Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" and Public Image Ltd's "Poptones" also have ambiguous key centers, and that Fiona Apple's "Hot Knife" also includes a climax by coupling vocal hooks. In other words, he clarified that while Daft Punk certainly has a knack for making smart hits, "Get Lucky" is by no means sui generis.

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It's Really Funny: Is it just me, or is comparing a song's ambiguous key center to the Kinsey Scale, really, really funny? Across the board, Pallett kills it with the humor. Even when he's earnestly describing the song's rising, congealing chorus as "a climax of ecstatic melodic copulation," it is a very clever and smile-worthy description of how the song works. Same thing goes for when he describes the repetition of "Get Lucky" as a "delicious middle finger extended here."

There's An Extremely Interesting Tidbit About Linguistics: My favorite part of Pallett's essay is in his wrap-up, where he points out a "key idiosyncrasy in the text setting" of the tune. He explains that the English-language song, written by French speakers, shares an "identical beauty mark" with Phoenix's "If I Ever Feel Better."

Both songs include a Francophonic lyrical faux pas where the robots say "We're up all night for good fun" and Phoenix sing "Remind me to spend some good time with you," similar to how a German might say "See us again" when referring to just himself or even let's "do sports" while talking about exercise. No one in the States would say this, but also few people in the States even noticed this oddness!

The Francobots' linguistic slip-up ends up working in their favor as it changes how the lyrics are punctuated: "WE'RE up all night for good FUN." Pointing out this "irresistible abuse of the word good" blew my mind and seemed to be the type of specificity that only a brilliant person would notice in a pop song.

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Cons:

There are a couple showboating moments: While explaining the melodies, he gets a little cocky and includes:It’s not textbook perfect, but even Jeppesen would begrudgingly give this example a passing grade. Deductions for an open fourth, two unresolved seconds, and for repetitiousness of material? 6/10)." Ok, we get it, you're extremely smart. But, what's vague here is what exactly is this song getting a passing grade in?

If those deductions were fixed, would it make it the perfect pop song in all respects? Or would it make it the most perfect pop song from a music theorist's perspective? And if you can recognize all these traits that make a hit, Mr. Pallett, why not consult more? Why not work with a pop star to make the perfect hit that pleases both savants and laypeople? Maybe that last bit is unwarranted (plus, I think his music is very good and very underrated), but a little bit more context for "Perfect Pop According To Who?" would make this less braggadocious.

More visualizations or embeds: I appreciated when Pallett included the sheet music so we could visualize how the syncopated robot hook and the arcing Pharrell hook balance one another. I wish there was a little more of this, though, especially when he talks about the ecstatic melodic copulation of the chorus. It makes sense in his description, but it would have been cool to see it written out. Just sayin'—it's easier to learn with written text and, well, infographics.

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Play for us, please!: Pallett often plays live by himself, using an arsenal of loop pedals and other gear that turn this solo musician into a tech-enabled orchestra. It would have been a serious bonus to see him playing the various hooks and rhythms of this song on his violin and then loop them all into some melodic copulation.

Ok, so admittedly both of these exercises from Gonzales and Pallett were awesome. But if we had to pick a winner, it'd be Pallett—no questions asked. Chilly's video is succinct and accessible, but Pallett is Hattori Hanzao sharp without ever truly succumbing to pretension or inaccessbility. We can't wait for his next post in this series—hey, maybe he and Chilly should do a head-to-head theory breakdown. Then we could really see who's the musical genius.

@zachsokol

For more Daft Punk:

Meet The Collaborators Behind Daft Punk's Random Access Memories: Episode 6 - Chilly Gonzales

Now That Burial's Revealed Himself, Who Are The Remaining Anonymous Artist Icons?

Daft Punk Is Killing The Merch Game With New Shirts And Posters