Instant Crush - Daft Punk feat. Julian Casablancas

I miss 2013

By Julianna

daft punk and julian casablancas. PC: Wikimedia Commons & NME, respectively.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t been able to stop listening to the Brat remix album. All of the unlikely collaborations were such a treat and a wonderful homage to the most defining album of 2024. 

I especially loved “Mean Girls” with Julian Casablancas. On the surface, it might be difficult to identify some of the similarities between Charli xcx and Casablancas. But they’re both superstars in the music industry who’ve captured specific moments in pop culture. They’re hedonistic, unabashedly themselves, and sometimes say the wrong thing. But they also have this vulnerable side to them that they aren’t afraid to put forward.

This isn’t the first time Casablancas has done collaborations. Outside of the Strokes, Casablancas shortly pursued a solo career and even ventured into projects like The Voidz, an experimental rock group that recently released their third album, Like All Before You. If you remember The Lonely Island, you know Casablancas also appeared on one of their skits on a track called “Boombox”.

But my favorite collaboration of Casablancas’ was with Daft Punk on a melancholic track called “Instant Crush”. The collaboration was masterminded by video director and art director Warren Fu, who had worked with Daft Punk and Casablancas separately. The idea for the song came from the French electronic duo about a boy reflecting on childhood memories of a crush, but ultimately being too afraid to pursue anything. 

Originally, Daft Punk enlisted Paul Williams — responsible for writing 70s hits such as The Carpenter’s “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Evergreen” by Barbra Streisand (the theme song of the OG A Star is Born — to write the lyrics to the track, which was initially slated to be called “Summer Crush”. But Casablancas thought those lyrics fell flat and scrapped them altogether, coming up with something he thought better conveyed the song’s idea. 

Casablancas also chose his own vocal style, rejecting Daft Punk’s suggestions. He said Daft Punk ““wanted me to kind of do my Strokes-y [singing], and I was like, no, no, no …I wanna be a cyborg.”

And that’s exactly what it sounds like. It reminds me of the Spike Jonze movie Her (2013), where Theodore, the main character, falls in love with a robot. It’s dystopic in a way that’s not exactly frightening, but lonely and isolating. And I feel “Instant Crush” sort of conveys the same feelings, even if the two projects aren’t at all related.

“Instant Crush” was released as a single off Daft Punk’s award-winning Random Access Memories (2013) and was certified platinum 10 years later. The nostalgic synth-pop track is massively appealing. It’s one of those songs that you can get everyone in your friend group to agree upon.