Daft Punk and the Art of the Breakup

Your favorite band is going to break up, contrary to the wishes of the Dawes of the world. The breakup is the inevitable conclusion of every musical ensemble, whether it be the result of creative/personal tensions, fatigue, or other, sadder circumstances. There will always come a time when the music stops. Sometimes it’s not forever (according to Wikipedia, Kiss has toured 13 times since the conclusion of their 2000-2001 “Farewell Tour”), but eventually it will be. And really, at the end of the day it’s this finality that lends that special air of mystique to a catalog. 

Between Please Please Me to Let it Be, The Beatles put out over a dozen records in the span of just seven years. And then they managed to turn “The Breakup” into an event, something more than a simple dissolution. Once they were done, they were done. No big stadium-filling reunion tours or money-grab comeback albums. With the exception of the three survivors coming together to work on two unreleased John Lennon demos for the Anthology project, The Beatles were purely an entity to be referred to in the past tense. Would they be so highly regarded if not for this fact? I don’t think they would. 

So, when Daft Punk announced their split early last week, it should have felt inevitable. Yet, for me at least, it felt like a punch to the gut and I can’t really explain why. The duo hadn’t put out an album since 2013’s Grammy-winning Random Access Memories, the release that will most likely come to define them going forward. They popped up here and there to produce the occasional track for the likes of Kanye West or The Weeknd, but for the most part things were quiet. There was no real reason to expect a new album (or song, or movie, or anything else) anytime soon, but there was also no reason to expect such a formal declaration of calling it quits.

The Daft Punk breakup is what happens when a group decides to call it a day at the height of their power. They’d hit their creative peak with their most recent work and had not even approached the level of overexposure typically suffered by popular artists. They managed to become household names while working entirely within the traditionally “niche” stylings of electronic and house music, pulling in elements of funk and disco and somehow managing to have a noted influence on artists ranging from LCD Soundsystem to Busta Rhymes to Kacey Musgraves. They did all of this while wearing robot helmets and making anime-style movies and music videos, and yet no one with a clue would ever dare call them a novelty act. 

And so, it appears that Daft Punk’s 28-year career has come to an end. There’s no breathless waiting for the new album, no wondering about when the next tour will be. Instead we are left to find a new appreciation for the archive. Four albums, two films, some other assorted odds and ends. This is what Daft Punk has left us with and it is a formidable legacy. Acts so influential don’t come around often, and it is even less often that we are able to observe their impact in real-time. Maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe there will be a triumphant return. But, for now at least, it appears that their work is, in fact, over. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

- Slone