Give Life Back to Music: Daft Punk's Opening Statement

"Give Life Back to Music" opens Random Access Memories, released on 17 May 2013 through Columbia as the first of the album's thirteen tracks. At 4:34, it sets the record's terms early: live players, careful arrangement, and vocals delivered by Daft Punk through a vocoder rather than sung plainly.^[01][03][05]

The personnel list reads like a session-musician roll call. Nile Rodgers and Paul Jackson Jr. play guitar; Chilly Gonzales contributes keyboards, with additional keyboards from Chris Caswell. John "J.R." Robinson drums and Nathan East plays bass. Rodgers had first met the duo at a Daft Punk listening party in New York City.^[05]

The album's sessions ran at Electric Lady Studios in New York, with vocals largely cut in Paris and the rhythm section recorded in the United States. Post-processing of the vocoder material fell to Mick Guzauski at Capitol Studios — a division of labour that suits a track built from distinct, separately gathered layers.^[05]

It reached radio on 31 January 2014 as the album's fifth single, charting in France, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom. On 22 February 2023, Daft Punk announced a tenth-anniversary edition of Random Access Memories, which included "GLBTM (Studio Outtakes)" as its second single.^[05]

Daft Punk had formed in 1993 and disbanded in 2021, meaning the anniversary release arrived after the duo's end — a return to the opening track's raw materials rather than to the duo itself.^[04][05]