On Monday evening a landmark building hosted a landmark event. As the sun set over London, dozens of invited stars headed to the top of the Shard to get an exclusive first listen to the feverishly anticipated new album by chart topping French duo Daft Punk.
In terms of the hype it has generated, Daft Punk’s return to the limelight, after an absence of several years, has been rivalled only by that of David Bowie. And both have been ramped up by clever manipulation of the internet.
Bowie surprised everyone by quietly releasing his first new song in a decade online, then sat back and watched it go viral. Daft Punk, on the other hand, teased fans with clips of their single in order to generate interest ahead of its release.
“It’s almost like a striptease where you see something gradually instead of uncovering it as a whole,” band member Thomas Bangalter told the Observer Magazine.
Get Lucky is a lush slice of feel-good 70s disco that has since gone on to top the charts and break Spotify’s record for the most streams in a day. This has raised expectations for the album, Random Access Memories, and it seems apt that Daft Punk chose the Shard for its launch.
Even when they’re plundering musical history Daft Punk manage to sound utterly contemporary. So what better venue could they have chosen than Renzo Piano’s gleaming glass skyscraper that towers over the London skyline in the same way they currently tower over the charts?
And although the guests were probably not aware of it, the Shard has an association with pop culture that stretches back to the Swinging Sixties.
Before entering the property industry, Shard developer Irvine Sellar could be found selling clothes to London’s bright young things on Carnaby Street. Later he launched the Mates by Irvine Sellar chain which was one of the first shops to sell men’s and women’s fashions under the same roof.
In the past Sellar has likened it to today’s Next stores. “During the 1970s, there was hardly anyone of an age group that wasn’t wearing something we produced – that was the buzz,” he said.
Perhaps the only disappointment for those present was that Daft Punk were not. But the fact that a bunch of people turning up to listen to a pop record attracted such wide media attention shows they didn’t need to be.
Incidentally, celebrity watchers may be interested to know that, according to some newspaper reports, Calvin Harris and Rita Ora did indeed get lucky and left the Shard together to spend the rest of the evening at Notting Hill’s Electric Cinema.
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