10 Iconic Rock Stars Who Guested On Pop Songs
5. Instant Crush - Julian Casablancas
Of every dance focused act to come out in recent years, Daft Punk has seemed to get some seal of approval from rock artists. Maybe it's the fact that they have punk in their name or the fact that they favor having guitars in the mix, but every one of the projects that they've been on has a lot more attitude behind it for rockers to enjoy. And while Random Access Memories is already a love letter to the past, it also looked to the future on Instant Crush.
Bringing in Julian Casablancas of the Strokes to provide the Auto-tuned vocals, there's a lot more character that they get out of his voice on this one. Since Julian was always known for sounding a lot more disaffected and bored while singing on the Strokes' early work, hearing him smothered in Autotune talking about his infatuation with this person brings a lot more humanity to the performance, like he's trying to distort his voice in whichever way to come off as sincere.
All of the guitar breaks also come courtesy of Mr. Casablancas, sounding just a bit off in the best way possible way, almost like the robots are trying to combine with the guitar and make some sort of hair metal solo. While this kind of crush might not last very long, this is the kind of track that can at least preserve the moment for what it was.