Year: 2013
UK Chart Position: 1
I’ve never met anyone who dislikes this song. They may not love it. But to say you don’t like it would be like saying you don’t like “Happy Birthday”. Paul McCartney once said that "Yesterday" came to him in a dream, and when he wrote it down he thought someone had written it before. "Get Lucky" has the same instant recognition. You can't quite believe it took until 2013 for it to exist. .Its like-ability lies in its total simplicity. Musically, it’s almost like a nursery rhyme. I once saw a You Tube post where some clever bod had re-imagined “Get Lucky” into a different style per decade, starting in the 1920’s. It works as a Jazz-era, Gatsby-bop, a 1950’s Rockabilly stomp, a 1960’s Motown classic, and a 1970’s punk snarl. You can seemingly transpose it anywhere, to any genre, and it works because it’s that universal.
It’s (uni)versatility is replicated in the lyrics. Like “the legend of the phoenix” it references, the song seems to regenerate itself as it goes along, like Dr.Who set to music. And sonically aping this sentiment, it doesn’t seem to have an end or a beginning. We’ve just caught it at a place in time, temporary passengers as it rolls on, fading out as it continues on its never ending journey. In between, we find that planets are spinning, nights eclipse days and we raise our cups to the stars, nano-seconds in a greater cosmic force where - as participants - we’re over in the blink of an eye.
Cleverly, the cast reinforces the concept of the song, as a lineage from the past (in Nile Rodgers), is linked to the re-birth of Pharrell Williams as a commercial force. It’s a neat trick that the past and the present are being pieced together by two robots ushering us into the future. Maybe they are human after all.
The moment: The whole song is a moment. One big, cosmic moment….
In a word: Planetary
