Robot Rock

"Robot Rock" was the lead single from Human After All in 2005 and one of the most deliberately abrasive things Daft Punk had released to that point. Built around a sample of Breakwater's "Release the Beast," it is almost entirely riff - a single, distorted guitar figure repeated and processed over a driving drum machine pattern, with almost nothing else happening.

Critics were divided on Human After All as an album, and "Robot Rock" divided opinion in a similar way: too simple, too repetitive, too thin as a studio track. Live, it was transformed.

Alive 2007 opened every single night with "Robot Rock" - the pyramid dark, the crowd waiting, then that riff hitting at full volume as the lights came up. As an opening statement it was near-perfect: simple enough to land immediately, heavy enough to signal that the next 90 minutes were going to be physical. The Coachella 2006 footage captures this better than anything else; the moment "Robot Rock" starts is the moment you understand why the show became legendary.

See more on the tour it anchored: the Alive 2007 North American leg.