Daft Punk was famous for his music as a producer who was able to create a wide variety of music genres, mostly houses, disco, funk and techno. Not only created but they had the ability to mix all of those elements into one song, turning it into a masterpiece.
The song was published in 1997, in their debut studio album, "Homework" (London, 2021). The song at first was a banger, every club, bars opened. In October 2011, NME placed it at number 21 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years" (Schiller, 2011). In 2022, the duo decided to create a music video for the song. When published, the MV was being said as another masterpiece from the duo. The video was directed by Michel Gondry and focuses on using dance movements to represent the music and instruments, also known as Choreography. The choreography was mentored by Blanca Li.
While other artists released a MV for their song with full lyrics, Daft punk created a MV for their dancing music. "Around the world" lyrics were quite simple, just the phrase "around the world" being repeated again and again. But the "souls" of this video is the dancing, movements and all the mise-en-scene in the MV.
To be specific, all the dance movements in the music video follow the rhyme and sync with the music. You can easily see that every maneuver of the dancers follows the beat in the background. According to Michel Gondry in his commentary video, each group of dancers represent an instrument that contributes to the song. For instance, the mummies were the rhythm boxes, the skeletons were the guitars, vocoders were the robot, the bassist were the athletes and the synthesizer were the disco girls (Daft Punk, 2022).
From the images, you could see that the staircase up and down represent the increase and decrease in the bassline of the music/instruments. The lights behind also support the music video. Together, all the light spots create waves, flashes that fit with the music and also helps enhance the emotion that the music was giving the audience.
Personally, I found this MV really interesting. When I first watched the video, I thought it was a meaningless video with weird elements and was not too interested in the MV yet. But the more I watch it, the more I feel that the director has done an amazing job on the MV. The video is a masterpiece in terms of both hearing and seeing. The visuals were colorful, funny and unique, plus the disco, funky music. Overall, the MV is unique and beautiful in its own way.
REFERENCE LIST:
Daft Punk (2022) Daft punk - around the world (official music video with audio commentary by Michel Gondry), YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5D7SYiA6w4 (Accessed: 23 August 2023).
London, A. (2021) ‘Around the world’ by Daft Punk, Song Meanings and Facts. Available at: https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/around-the-world-by-daft-punk/ (Accessed: 21 August 2023).
Schiller, R. (2011) 150 best tracks of the past 15 years, NME. Available at: https://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years-1257 (Accessed: 21 August 2023).
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