Two Robots and Paul Williams Walk Into a Studio...
Touch - Daft Punk ft. Paul Williams (Blast from the Past Sunday)
Having written about music for a while now, I find myself with a few quirks when I go to listen to it. Every time I hear a song, I listen to the small details, sometimes missing cool stuff that’s right out in the front. I’m always trying to figure out a good way to describe what I’m listening to, one that’ll make a song irresistible if I pitch it to someone. I think this is the reason I compare music to food or color, things that are tangible, unlocking a different sense than just hearing. If I love a song, I want people to experience it deeply, open themselves up to it! Most songs require a little bit of description to help with that. But sometimes a musician or band does all the work for you, creates a piece of music so beautiful and life-altering that it changes your world forever.
“Touch” by Daft Punk feat. Paul Williams (PAUL WILLIAMS!!!) captures that exact feeling. It’s on my “earth shatter songs” playlist, the one I would cue up if the world was about to end. If I only had time to listen to the first minute of the song, I would be perfectly happy. Well, maybe not perfectly happy, since the world is ending, but still. I love nothing more than deep, resonant keyboards and weird, unique soundscapes.
“Touch” is a song that builds a world for the listener from the very start. Those keyboards place me in a rocket going to space, and the distorted voice of Paul Williams (PAUL WILLIAMS!!!) is like the voice of the people down below who are controlling my ride. The beginning is a little off-putting — my family often listens to this album at dinner and usually skip straight to the start of the verse for this very reason. However, with October coming up, I think “Touch”(or at least the very beginning of it) would do very well at a Halloween party!
After building up the suspense, the curtains lift to reveal who else but Paul Williams. (PAUL WILLIAMS!!!) Like I said, I’ve listened to this song over and over at dinnertime, and one thing my family always agrees on is that he absolutely crushes this song. His vocals are a bit shaky in a way that perfectly compliments the philosophical lyrics, and they really shine when the instruments are pulled back and it’s just him and one keyboard. When I imagine Williams in the studio recording this song (something I do fairly frequently), I like to think his eyes got brighter as he went on, the confidence in him building as he realized that he was the star of the show. Yeah, that’s right. He’s PAUL WILLIAMS!!!
The part where Daft Punk actually comes in on the vocals, the one that was used in the infamous video announcing their split, is not to be under appreciated. I hesitate to call it catchy, because I don’t really think it’s the type of chorus to sing along to, but it does a great job of segway-ing into what comes next.
I’m sorry, I typed that last part wrong. It should be WHAT COMES NEXT in all caps, because it’s perhaps the most beautiful, most eye-opening, most powerfully cosmic moment in any song ever. It has an almost physical sensation, this rapid, scary musical descent that transforms into elongated rising ecstasy. Add some heavenly vocals, a driving drum beat, and chunky bass and it’s just absolute perfection.
But WAIT! After all this, what could possibly make this song any better? I got one name for you, and you can probably guess it. Winner gets… two dollars and a piece of bubblegum!! Got your answer locked in? Okay, say it with me now….
PAUL WILLIAMS!!! This absolute perfection stops itself short, halts quickly, and for a split second you’re left hanging, nearly out of breath from the previous section of the song, and then suddenly he’s there, there with that voice that screams vulnerability, that voice that makes a perfect song perfect-er, that voice that honestly moves me to or very close to tears every single time I hear this part of the song. He’s fading, it seems, at least in the beginning, and then he comes back, angrily crying out “you’ve almost convinced me I’m real” in the exact way that he needed to say it, the exact way that makes this song as good as it is.
A key component of my “earth shatter songs” is that all of them make me feel a specific, intense emotion at the end. “Reflektor” by Arcade Fire make me feel like everything is dangerous, make me ready to fight. Elvis’ “An American Trilogy” make me feel out of breath, as if I just sang that impossible note along with him. “Heart of Stone” by the Mini Mansions makes me feel desperate for something I’m not quite sure of. All of these make me feel like I need to take some sort of action, do something! But “Touch” is different. “Touch”, especially with it’s emotionally taxing ending, makes me feel defeated. It puts me in the shoes of who Paul Williams is singing for, someone who is crying out for something that’s unavailable, something that will never happen and he knows it. All songs feel as though they speak directly to the listener, whether consciously or unconsciously. But there’s something about a song with a mind of it’s own, a song that knows it’s given someone “too much to feel”, a song that I think is not only close to being convinced that it’s real, but close to BEING real. The amount of human emotion felt through not only the lyrics, but also the music itself is an amazing feat, one that I don’t know can ever be matched again, one that I don’t know if I ever want to be matched again. It’s a powerful song with a powerful message, one that I think is beautiful in the way that it portrays loneliness and forces the listener to actually feel it. And, of course, it will always be high on my list because of the one, the only, Paul Williams. (PAUL WILLIAMS!!!)
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