"Get Lucky" is a song by French electronic music duo Daft Punk featuring American musician Pharrell Williams and American guitarist Nile Rodgers. Daft Punk released the song as the lead single from their fourth and final studio album, Random Access Memories, on 19 April 2013. Before its release as a single, it was featured in television advertisements broadcast during Saturday Night Live, after which Rodgers and Williams announced their involvement in the track. "Get Lucky" is a house-inspired disco, funk, and pop track with lyrics that, according to Williams, are about the good fortune of connecting with someone, as well as sexual chemistry. Upon release, it received widespread acclaim from music critics, who praised Williams's vocals and Rodgers's guitar riffs.
"Get Lucky" reached number one in several countries, including Daft Punk's native France, where the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP) certified it diamond. The song peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks, giving Daft Punk their first top-10 hit in the United States. In the UK, the single topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and was the second best-selling single of 2013 with 1,308,007 copies sold. It won multiple awards, including Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. Daft Punk performed "Get Lucky" at the awards, joined by Rodgers, Williams and American singer Stevie Wonder.
Background Daft Punk first met Nile Rodgers at a listening party in New York City for the duo's 1997 debut album Homework, and became friends thereafter. However, Rodgers noted that a series of near misses and scheduling conflicts had delayed their chance of collaborating. The duo eventually invited him to the Random Access Memories sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
As a member of production team the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams had helped remix Daft Punk's 2001 song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".Daft Club (liner notes). Daft Punk. Virgin Records, a division of EMI Music France. 2003. Daft Punk then and produced the 2010 single "Hypnotize U" by Williams's band, N.E.R.D.Nothing (liner notes). N.E.R.D. Interscope Records, a division of Universal Music Group. 2010. Interested in collaborating further, Williams ran into Daft Punk at a party hosted by American singer Madonna and said he would work with the duo in any capacity. At a subsequent meeting in Paris, Williams shared some of his material that had been inspired by Rodgers, with whom Daft Punk revealed they had recently been writing and recording.
Production
"Get Lucky" was completed in approximately 18 months. Prior to Rodgers's involvement, the song existed in a rough form that centered on a Wurlitzer electronic piano. After listening to Daft Punk's demo of what would become "Get Lucky", Rodgers asked that all of the elements except the drum track be muted so that he could create a suitable guitar part; he recalled that he experimented until the duo were visibly pleased. Once Rodgers finished, Daft Punk had Nathan East re-record the bass part to fit Rodgers's performance. Rodgers further elaborated: "Everybody else wound up re-playing to me." Mixer and engineer Mick Guzauski recalled that the rhythm guitar fit easily into the production: "I experimented with balancing and other positioning, and working other stuff around it. He didn’t have to be processed – Nile just sounded great the way he is." The song as it appears on the album also features a synthesizer and vocals by Daft Punk, keyboards by Chris Caswell and additional guitar performed by Paul Jackson Jr.Random Access Memories (liner notes). Daft Punk. Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. 2013.
Williams noted that the duo adopted a perfectionist approach when recording the vocals for "Get Lucky", as he was asked to perform several takes and multiple instances of specific phrases. He also said that when he returned to the United States after recording his vocals, he had "forgotten everything" regarding the composition of "Get Lucky". He attributed it to jet lag, but jokingly wondered if Daft Punk had tampered with his memory. The duo responded, saying that Williams's lyrics and performance had arisen spontaneously, and was likely the reason he had trouble recalling the song.
In promotion of the 10th anniversary edition of the album, a video series Memory Tapes was released throughout 2023. In Williams's episode, he revealed that he did not expect his vocals to be on the finished versions of "Get Lucky" and "Lose Yourself to Dance". The episode contains footage of Williams's reaction upon listening to both of the completed songs for the first time.
Composition
Music critics described "Get Lucky" as a house-inspired disco, funk, and pop track. The song is composed in the key of F minor, in the B dorian mode and follows the chord progression of Bm–D–Fm–E. The song runs at common time with a tempo of 116 BPM.
In an article for Slate, Owen Pallett states that the song can be heard in two different keys: "Most of the time it sounds as if it's in the minor mode of [F♯] Aeolian [...] essentially a form of [F♯] minor", which appears as the third chord of the progression on the line "We're up all night for good fun". The first chord of the progression is not F♯ minor, but B minor; the song "slides back to it each time" on the line "I'm up all night to get some". Pallett continues, "when the chord cycle comes back to the beginning [...] the ear is tricked for a moment into thinking that the song is in a different key, a musical Tilt-a-Whirl". British journalist Caitlin Moran speculated that the song's attractiveness is due to its combination of minor chords and regular disco-type "up" beats throughout the song, with the former creating an unresolved feeling.
Friend and occasional collaborator Chilly Gonzales mentioned that Daft Punk had previously used the chord progression in "Around the World" and that the verse, pre-chorus and chorus of "Get Lucky" are largely defined by the melodic phrasing of the vocal. He also noted the resemblance of the upward-moving sustained notes in the pre-chorus to those in the title phrase of the song "Can't Help Falling in Love". Jake Cohen for Consequence wrote that the rising pattern complemented the sense of "ascending 'to the stars'". Pallett further described that in the bridge, Daft Punk "overlay the hook from the pre-chorus with the hook from the chorus, getting them both going simultaneously". Jason Lipshutz of Billboard mentioned that the song has "an effectively simple hook and clipped robo-breakdown to create a warm, winning throwback". Williams's vocal and Daft Punk's vocoder performance span three octaves together: D2 to D5.
Tim Jonze for The Guardian said the lyrics are an "ode to joyless sex, hard-won after a war of attrition". He also noted the lyrics "She's up all night 'til the sun/ I'm up all night to get some/ She's up all night for good fun/ I'm up all night to get lucky" are about "sexual politics". Pharrell mentioned that the title "Get Lucky" does not only refer to sexual acts, but also the good fortune of meeting with and immediately connecting to someone. Rodgers noted that the titular phrase plays off of a guitar line he had contributed, and thus the song may have ended up with a completely different title had Rodgers not been involved. Cohen described the "easy-to-sing celebration of hedonistic good times of the chorus, and the vocoder-laden outro where the voices become another delicious layer in the instrumental gumbo." Pharrell also remarked that the music evoked the sense of being on an exotic island during a "peachy color[ed]" sunrise.
Promotion "Get Lucky" was first publicly revealed via two 15-second television advertisements on Saturday Night Live. Rodgers announced his contribution to the song shortly afterward, and noted that various fan remixes of the clips appeared online since they aired. The third trailer, which was shown at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, officially announced Williams's involvement in the song and features Daft Punk, Rodgers, and Williams performing together. The promotional web series The Collaborators featured excerpts of "Get Lucky", culminating in the Williams-focused episode in which the song was first referred to by name. The song was leaked and broadcast on various radio stations days before it was released as a single. One day before the song's release, the single's cover artwork was revealed on Amazon, featuring a band playing in front of a setting sun.
Daft Punk released the song as the lead single from their fourth and final studio album, Random Access Memories, on 19 April 2013. A trailer for the official "Get Lucky" remix was released via the Columbia Records YouTube channel on 25 June 2013. Rodgers later stated that video footage for "Lose Yourself to Dance" had been shot simultaneously with footage for "Get Lucky". The Daft Punk remix was later released on Spotify and, as of 27 June 2013, was streamed 64 million times. Rodgers stated in an interview with The Guardian that a different video for the song was shot in March 2013, which is distinct from the Coachella trailer. A 12" vinyl single was released on 16 July 2013, featuring a ten-minute remix by Daft Punk, the album version and the radio edit.
Reception Critical response "Get Lucky" received universal acclaim. Michael Cragg from The Guardian said the song "eschews the crunching electronics of their last album and the vocoder-lead future-disco of Discovery", and it was the "best thing Pharrell Williams has been involved with for a long time". Pitchfork listed "Get Lucky" as a Best New Track, stating that the song's "real elegance lies in the hands of Nile Rodgers"; one of its contributors, Mark Richardson, opined the song was a "deserved hit". Lewis Corner from Digital Spy gave the single five stars and said although Daft Punk's "creative methods may be unorthodox, the final result is a legal rush we can all enjoy". Thomas Smith of NME said the song is "impossibly good" and called it an "old-school jam session that's been spun into a super-sleek slice of pop magic". Chris Mincher of The A.V. Club stated the song "has run up the charts with little more than a simple, breezy funk groove". The staff of Rolling Stone said the song has a "bright guitar shimmer, robot come-ons, falsetto soul and a beat that keeps you up having good fun until you see the sun".
Steve Lampiris for The Line of Best Fit said "Get Lucky" is the "breeziest thing Daft Punk have ever made. The itchy slink of Nile Rodgers' guitar suggests a wonderful sunset that never ends". For AllMusic, Heather Phares praised the song as "so suave that it couldn't help but be an instant classic, albeit a somewhat nostalgic one". Slate Geeta Dayal described the track as a "breezy, infectious disco hit [that] seemed to be a good omen". Benji Taylor of Renowned for Sound mentioned the song is "driven by Nile Rodgers' irresistible funk fuelled guitar licks, and feature[s] vocals by Williams that would not have sounded out of place on Off the Wall or Thriller". Tatiana Cirisano of Billboard stated it has a "dreamy, retro-meets-futurism magic and a perfectly ambiguous message". Miles Raymer for the Chicago Reader opined it is a "quintessential summer jam, bouncy but not oppressively eager to get you to dance, with a Pharrell vocal hook that's basically impossible to get out of your head once it's in there and a guitar riff from the legendary Nile Rodgers that's nearly as hard to shake".