"Instant Crush" is a song written, produced, and performed by French electronic music duo Daft Punk featuring American musician Julian Casablancas.
[3] While working on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack in 2010, Daft Punk met with Casablancas in their studio through a mutual friend, Warren Fu.
[4] Casablancas responded favorably to the demo upon listening to it and subsequently agreed to provide accompanying vocals, forming the basis for what would become "Instant Crush".
He subsequently discarded the lines in favor of ones that he spontaneously sang to fit the structure of "Instant Crush", and expressed that doing so conveyed Daft Punk's concept better.
Nathan East performed on bass guitar while John "JR" Robinson played drums and Quinn provided percussion.
[7] Critic John Balfe considered the Casablancas performance "appropriately Strokes-ish, even if his trademark drawl is fed quite substantially through a vocoder.
The music video was shot on 35mm film in a 4:3 aspect ratio and was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" as well as The Twilight Zone television series.
Years pass as the soldier figure stands inside his box alone, watching the sun come through a window, lighting up archived artwork depicting couples embracing.
A shelf in the video is briefly shown holding the Daft Punk robot helmets, which were originally engineered by Gardner and Alterian.Credits adapted from Random Access Memories liner notes.