Two robots, one house revolution and a farewell after 28 years

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo met in 1987 at the Lycée Carnot in Paris and began recording demos with schoolmates. In 1992 they formed an indie rock band, Darlin', named after a Beach Boys song, with Laurent Brancowitz. Their first release was a track on the EP Shimmies in Super 8, issued by Stereolab's label Duophonic, and Stereolab invited them to open shows in the United Kingdom. When Darlin' ended, the two kept going as Daft Punk.

Homework arrived in 1997 on Virgin, with “Around the World” and “Da Funk” among its singles, and the duo became central to French house, blending house, funk, disco, techno and rock. From 1999 they appeared in public as robots, Bangalter in a silver helmet and Homem-Christo in gold. Discovery in 2001 gave them “One More Time”, “Digital Love” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and turned into the animated film Interstella 5555, supervised by Leiji Matsumoto.

Human After All followed in 2005, and a live album, Alive 2007, won the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album. They also made the film Electroma and scored Tron: Legacy. Their last album, Random Access Memories in 2013, moved them to Columbia and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Get Lucky”, with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. In 2016 “Starboy”, with the Weeknd, gave them their only Billboard Hot 100 number one, and “I Feel It Coming” belongs to the same moment.

Rolling Stone ranked them the twelfth-greatest musical duo in 2015 and put Discovery and Random Access Memories on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. In 2021 they announced an amicable split after twenty-eight years. The masks stayed on, and what remains is a body of dance music that kept both feet on the floor and one eye on the future.