Gildas Loaec, co-founder of cult French indie record and clothing label Kitsuné, was helping manage Roulé at the time, as well as Daft Punk. Within weeks, though, the demand for the track was more than Stardust could keep up with. “Some people say, ‘When this track was played for the first time it was amazing, everybody was dancing’ - in my opinion, it’s not true,” Braxe relates. “It didn’t take a long time for people to understand the structure of the track and start to dance on it, but the very first listen the reaction was, ‘What is it?’”ĭavid Morales, Spearmint and the Best Piano Sample of 1998 The track was so original and new, in fact, Diamond and Braxe say it didn’t catch on immediately when it first hit the clubs of Paris. We were very happy because we felt like we achieved something original and quite new in its form,” he explains. “I remember when we recorded the original masters, and we were listening to the final version of the song. The track was completed on a Monday morning, recalls Braxe, in Bangalter’s home studio in Paris (affectionately known as Daft House), and was released on Roulé in the spring of 1998. I feel right, the music sounds better with you The final product is sublime in its simplicity - the looped two-second sample, a glittery, stomping kick drum, lots of filtering, and some universally relatable sentiments, relayed via Diamond’s creamy croon: We thought it was something like a mantra, and something everyone could understand.” The track was much fuller initially too, Braxe says: “We couldn’t find the right arrangement, until we started to cut some parts and just keep the best.” “Then we cut it back, finally, to have this very important sentence. “In the beginning it was much longer than it was now,” Diamond recalls. Over the course of a week, Braxe and Bangalter added melodies, and the three of them worked on the lyrics together. “We stopped on this one, like, ‘There is something here, and it deserves to be a song’,” says Braxe. While rehearsing and trying out new material, they starting searching for samples, finally landing on Chaka Khan’s “Fate”. He invited Bangalter to accompany him on bass and synths and Diamond, with whom he went to boarding school, to sing. Braxe had recently released his underground hit “Vertigo” on Bangalter’s Roulé label, and was asked to perform live.
“Music Sounds Better With You” was borne out of a jam session at Paris’ famous Rex Club.
#Stardust song update#
“I was a bit anxious too,” adds Braxe, “but a month ago I had a listen to the song and I felt like, ‘Wow, it sounds a bit old now.’ It sounds good, but compared to today it sounds a bit old, and I thought it’s a good thing to try and update it.” Nothing too crazy, though: “We did some very subtle compression, it sounds a bit like on the original 12-inch.” “It’s a special work to do so I was a bit anxious.” “You don’t know how it’s going to go,” says Diamond.
Talking to Billboard in Paris after the remastering session, Braxe and Diamond admitted to feeling a little uneasy about Stardust’s return to the studio (Bangalter, best known as one half of Daft Punk, declined to be interviewed for this piece). Late last month, the band’s members returned to the studio to work on a remastering of the track ahead of its 20th anniversary digital release, marking the first time it will be available on streaming platforms. The 98 Greatest Songs of 1998: Critics' Picks