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Today (Dec. 12), Daft Punk’s 2004 anime film Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem is screening in more than 800 theaters in 40 countries. While some of these theaters will host additional screenings over the weekend, this cinematic event is largely a one night only affair.
And in the numerology-centric Daft Punk universe — the group announced its breakup on 2/22/21 and livestreamed Interstella 5555 on Twitch exactly a year later, 2/22/22 — this screening happening on 12/12/24 is obviously not accidental.
“I think it’s a just a fun way to find a date to release something,” says Pedro Winter, who managed Daft Punk from 1996 to 2008. “Most of the time we do things for fun.”
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A quarter-century ago, creating an animated companion piece to the duo’s 2001 Discovery seemed like one such fun idea. The project would, however, also become an expensive, multi-year process that was a huge undertaking in an era when animation was still done by hand and resulted in a film that was only seen in full by a select few.
“I let you imagine the face of the accountant when you tell him you want to produce 14 videos that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each,” says Winter.
Animated by legendary Japanese anime artist Leiji Matsumoto in collaboration with Japan’s Toei Animation studio and scored by Discovery, Interstella 5555 was created as a series of music videos set to each of the album’s 14 perfect songs. (See an exclusive clip of the remastered film’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” section below.)
Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo conceived of the idea for the project, which tells the story of an evil music industry tycoon who kidnaps and brainwashes an alien rock group, transforms them into cookie cutter pop stars, brings them back to Earth and weasels them to the top of the charts. (The film “was written 25 years ago…. and it’s so relevant in 2025,” says Winter.)
While his memories of the creation process are reasonably hazy 25 years on, Winter says he’s pretty sure Bangalter and de Homem-Christo “produced the music first and then wrote the film around it. They needed the sound as a skeleton.” Once they had the script, they had to get Matsumoto onboard, knowing the artist – whose manga series Space Pirate Captain Harlock had been turned into an animated show the Daft Punk members watched as kids – might get their vision.
“While on a promo trip in Japan they met with Leiji Matsumoto, the legendary creator of the Space Pirate Captain Harlock anime to discuss their project with him,” says Emmanuel de Buretel, the founder of Because Music and former head of Virgin Records who signed Daft Punk to the latter label. “He was excited and quickly agreed to work with them on a manga movie inspired by Discovery.”
Daft Punk – Interstella 5555
Courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing
The project would be expensive, but Bangalter and de Homem-Christo had the will to make it happen and “pitched the concept themselves to Virgin Records,” recalls Winter. “Luckily the head of Virgin at the time was de Buretel, the only major label’s CEO who could understand Daft Punk’s vision… He was the one who fought and managed to get the approval from the whole EMI group.”
Ordering 14 custom-made anime music videos from one of the world’s great masters of the style may have seemed like a flight of fancy to the accounting department — but then again, at one point the idea of two guys playing electronic music while dressed as robots probably did too.
“Great artists are rare,” says de Buretel. “Great, hardworking and humble artists are even rarer. Visionaries like these are few and far between, and you can’t help but be inspired and motivated by their vision and work ethic.”
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo initially planned to finance the film themselves, although Virgin ended up fronting the money for a project that de Buretel says “very quickly became highly complex and costly, since they had to fly to Japan every month to finish editing, while also promoting the project. We, at Virgin, decided to help them finance it to finish quickly — that was a result of really believing in the project and their vision.” (Winter says “Virgin records was putting up the money, but at the end it was Daft Punk who paid the bill.”)
There was also one major benefit to Virgin helping with the financing: “They also made a very nice concession to do another album,” says de Buretel. (2005’s Human After All would complete Daft Punk’s three-album run on Virgin.)
Once financing was sorted, work on Interstella began in Japan, where Matsumoto worked in collaboration with animation studio Toei Animation. “We all went to Tokyo in early 2000,” recalls Winter. “We met Leiji Matsumoto at his place. It was magical, for real. He was a living legend. We grew up with his characters on French TV. He loved the robot characters of Daft Punk. They were speaking the same language; it was just amazing to see the band and Leiji getting along so well.”
A group of creators who may have seemed worlds apart found they actually had a lot in common. De Buretel calls the film “a blend of two cultural movements exploding at the same time, electronic music and anime. The modernity of the concept: using science fiction to explore themes of artists’ exploitation, could only have been done by such powerhouse thinkers as Leiji and Daft Punk.”
Daft Punk – Interstella 5555
Courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing
Daft Punk creative director Cédric Hervet soon joined the team to help develop the screenplay and the characters. While the idea was to launch the film at the same time as the album, that was not to be, with the film ultimately released two years after Discovery came out in February of 2001. (The album spent 30 weeks on the Billboard 200 across spans in 2001 and 2015.)
“Animation is such a long-term process,” says Winter, who recalls “receiving faxes from Toei Animation every week” with updates. “I loved the way the characters evolved, how the whole story took life,” he says.
Clips for the album singles “One More Time,” “Aerodynamic,” “Digital Love,” and “Harder Better Faster Stronger” were released first, and the complete film screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, along with a limited run in approximately 30 French theaters. A DVD of the full project them came out in late 2003. (“The animated House Musical,” the DVD’s cover reads.)
Daft Punk – Interstella 5555
Courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing
But until now, Interstella 5555 has never had a wide cinematic release in its full, hour-long form. The screenings are happening in partnership with Trafalgar Releasing, which specializes in special event cinema distribution and also worked on the 2023 cinematic releases of Taylor Swift‘s The Eras Tour concert film and Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
The remastered version showing globally today has been, de Buretel says, “upgraded to fit current standards and give all fans the opportunity to engage in it.” He adds that this global event is an opportunity for fans to “discover and re-discover the group’s magic artistically and sonically,” to celebrate Matsumoto, who passed away last year at age of 85, and to stir up some fun and celebrate a work that, like so much of Daft Punk’s output, was ahead of its time.
“The project seemed difficult 24 years ago,” says de Buretel. “It probably seems straightforward today, but it was very risky and hard to wrap your head around at the time. I think that’s why it is a cult movie now.”
After two weeks away from No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” is atop the survey yet again, zooming 5-1 on the Dec. 14-dated tally.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity from Dec. 2-8. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
“Maps,” released in 2003 as part of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ debut album Fever to Tell, initially reigned on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 for seven weeks between the surveys dated Oct. 12 and Nov. 23. It fell to No. 10 on the Nov. 30 chart, but just when it seemed like its rule was over, it rebounded to No. 5 last week, followed by its latest coronation.
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In all, “Maps” now boasts eight weeks at No. 1, second most since the chart began in September 2023 behind the 10-week run of Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” this year.
Despite the rebound, the trends driving “Maps” remain the same as they did upon its initial ascent. The song’s chief driver is a dance, often set to a sped-up version of the tune. A variety of different mixes of the song, including a Jersey club one, also exist, generally using the sped-up vocals. While the dance represents most of the high-performing uploads these days, creators have also used “Maps” to soundtrack a trend where they use a filter to remove their facial features and then have them cascade back down onto their face.
“Maps” reigns over a brand-new entry on the chart in the I’ll Take You There Choir’s version of “Like a Prayer,” recorded for the movie Deadpool & Wolverine. A choir version of Madonna’s three-week No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 from 1989, the sound has been used in a variety of edits (often to make a scene more dramatic), while a more recent trend tells a story while slowing zooming in on the face of Pepe from The Muppets.
Tyler, the Creator’s “Like Him,” featuring Lola Young, jumps to a new peak of No. 3 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, while Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” breaks into the top five for the first time this holiday season, rising 7-4. “Like Him” initially bowed at No. 6 on the Nov. 9 ranking and experienced a previous best of No. 4 the following week. More recently, creators have also used the sound to recap their 2024s, while another cuts in dialogue from the Spider-Verse franchise.
Besides “Like a Prayer,” one other song debuts in the top 10: Malcolm Todd’s “Chest Pain,” which starts at No. 6. The newly released song (Dec. 4) was teased on TikTok for weeks prior to its official premiere, and many of the top-performing uploads feature creators showing off their loved ones. The song racked up 557,000 official U.S. streams in just two days (Dec. 4-5) of its first Billboard tracking week.
Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” also hits the top 10 for the first time, leaping 15-10 in its second week on the tally. The title track from Grande’s 2018 album (No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a week that September) has a dance-related trend attached, with two people trading off different moves. It helps drive “Sweetener” to a 74% gain in listens to 1.1 million streams.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
You better believe Nick Cannon knows all about the magic of Christmas. The host of The Voice was, after all, married to the Queen of Christmas, Mariah Carey, for six years. Plus, with a dozen children on his nice list, shopping for holiday gifts is probably a part-time job for the always-hustling radio/TV star. He […]
Beyoncé is giving back for the holiday season. She got into the spirit with her BeyGood Foundation, making a $100,000 donation to the University of Houston’s Law Center on Wednesday (Dec. 11).
The gift to her hometown college will go toward benefiting the Criminal Justice Clinic, which will now be able to hire a full-time director and see expanded services poured into the program. With a full-time faculty, more students will be able to enroll in the clinic in future semesters.
“I am delighted that the BeyGood Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” Leonard Baynes, who serves as dean of the UH Law Center, said in a statement. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”
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With the added resources, the Criminal Justice Clinic will up efforts to assist communities and underserved areas surrounding the University of Houston.
Baynes continued: “At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGood envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings. And together, through this gift, the BeyGood Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”
Launched in 2013, Beyoncé’s BeyGood Foundation aims to support various organizations and uplift communities to economic prosperity, well-being and more.
It’s a busy close to 2024 for Bey. She pulled up to the Mufasa: The Lion King premiere in Los Angeles earlier this week with her family. While the Grammy-winning artist is reprising her role as Nala, daughter Blue Ivy is making her feature film debut as Kiara, Nala and Simba’s daughter.
“Seeing Blue as Kiara and hearing her voice come out of that character,” Bey said on Good Morning America, “it was really hard to focus and do my job after that. I was like, ‘Wait, hold up, guys. Y’all gotta give me a second. I have to digest that.’ I’m so proud of her.”
When Martyn Stewart was 11 years old, he spent countless hours in the woods near his family’s home in Birmingham, England. It was the mid 1960s, and out there in the untouched forest he was captivated by the sounds of nature: the wind, the animals, the water in the streams.
It was around this time that he acquired a recording device and brought it outside. “The first recording I ever made that I kept was the Eurasian Blackbird,” Stewart says today. “He became my mate. He was the guy who taught me melodies.”
Decades later, Stewart’s collection of nature sounds includes 97,000 individual recordings making up 30,000 hours. (That’s roughly 3.5 years.) The library includes the sounds of more than 3,500 bird species, countless insects, and myriad frogs, toads, mammals, trees, deserts, oceans and more, with Stewart capturing these field recordings in more than 60 countries.
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Now, a select few of them are folded into Imperfect Cadence, a collaborative album by Stewart and Robert Shields, a Scottish singer, songwriter and producer who makes music under the moniker ONR. On the album, Shields sings and plays instruments that complement and fuse with sounds Stewart recorded in Scotland during the mid-1970s, a time he spent traveling across the country — often on foot — recording the symphony of its vast, untouched and famously stunning wilderness.
It was “a sanctuary where I could go and lose myself, basically,” Stewart says. “Anywhere you dropped a microphone, you got a fantastic recording.” (Years later, when he was in his late 20s, Stewart learned that his biological father was Scottish, which he believes accounts for his affinity for the country.)
Martyn Shields in the 1970s
Courtesy of Martyn Stewart
Shields got involved in the project through Steven Melrose, the global head of creative at Los Angeles-based publishing company Seeker Music, who is also Scottish. Melrose was working with ONR when he was approached by Stewart’s niece, Amanda, who was hoping to mesh her uncle’s recordings with music in a respectful and contemporary way. Melrose introduced Shields and Stewart, and it was decided — given everyone’s connection to Scotland — the project would focus there.
Shields and Stewart subsequently met on Zoom to chat about making something together. Shields found himself entranced by Stewart’s life story and work. “The real kicker was when he then sent me the audio, which is just unbelievable,” Shields says.
Recordings include those Stewart made in areas around the famously picturesque Rannoch Moor, Culloden Moor, the site of a famous 1746 battle, and while walking along Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient Roman stone fortification dating back to 122 AD. “You kind of get into that mood of desolation and isolation,” Stewart says of being in these locations, even just through the audio. “You almost feel your primal self again. You can feel the blood pulsing through your veins.”
“The last thing I wanted to do was to take the audio and to mutilate it,” says Shields. “It was so beautiful in its raw form that I knew I had to treat it as a collaborator and not as a canvas.” Both artists were conscious of not wanting make “spa music, or something a little bit trite,” Shields adds.
Rannoch Moor, Scotland
Courtesy of Martyn Stewart
Imperfect Cadence is far from it. From the bird calls playing in tandem with Shield’s rich voice on the stirring opener “You & I” to the gentle waves on the orchestral “Than Water,” the project is a sophisticated and moving balance of input from both artists. “It was a genuine collaboration with the sort of oddity that Martyn wasn’t contributing musically,” says Shields. “He was contributing to the overall atmosphere and theme.”
Imperfect Cadence was released Dec. 5 on Seeker Music, with the company’s Melrose saying that given the album’s beauty, power and emotional depth he “couldn’t be prouder to be part of it alongside Martyn and Robert. Nature loves us unconditionally — we would do well to show it more love in return.”
Nature has indeed taken a hard hit in the decades since Stewart began recording it. Imperfect Cadence presents moments from the natural world that in many cases no longer exist due to subsequent human development and the noisy hum of traffic and people that it brings.
“Two-thirds of my archive is now extinct,” says Stewart. “We think of dinosaurs and dodos and Irish Elks being extinct, but we don’t look at sound as something that can disappear. But you can’t replicate what I’ve done. You can’t drop a microphone in the Serengeti and get what I did 20 years ago, because now there’s a road going through it.”
In more ways than one, Stewart understands what it’s like to look extinction in the eye. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer and given three to five years to live. These days he says he’s largely “bungee-corded to a hospital,” although when we speak, he’s in Louisiana on an expedition to make field recordings on the bayou. He’s planning to return to both Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Scotland’s Outer Hebrides islands to record.
“I’d like to go back to places to hear how much things have changed,” he says. “And I aim to. I’m living with cancer. I’m not dying with cancer.”
Imperfect Cadence is only one component of Stewart’s significant contribution to natural history, recorded sound and people interested in both. Roughly a decade ago, he was offered “a huge amount of money for the archive” by a company that makes videogame consoles. “I asked them where the library was going to end up, and they said it would be in a basement somewhere,” he recalls. “That was just absolutely a definite no.”
Instead, Stewart wants his prolific body of work to be used academically for students “who could benefit from the sounds” and by then be inspired to explore and protect nature. He foresees a portion of his catalog being donated to the British Library. “It has to be a voice for the natural world,” he says.
In fact, it already is. Imperfect Cadence is included in the Sounds Right project, a cross-DSP initiative launched in April that’s made “Nature” an official artist, with songs that incorporate nature sounds collected on a “Feat. Nature” playlist that’s earning royalties for conservation projects. (In October, the initiative announced that in its first six months, it raised $225,000 for conversation projects in Colombia’s Tropical Andes, a region with one of the world’s highest rates of biodiversity and native species.)
Robert Shields
Courtesy of Robert Shields
“It’s opened my eyes to the fact that there are incredible people working on sustainability, environmentalism, conservationism,” Shields says of being involved in Sounds Right. “When you get to dip your toe into a different world and see people who are committing so much time and energy to this stuff, it’s genuinely awe inspiring.”
For the time being, Stewart and Shields plan to meet in Scotland next month to make live versions of some of the album songs in several of the places where Stewart made the original recordings years back. “I’m so looking forward to that,” says Stewart. “And if that’s the last breath in my body, I’ll die a happy man.”
“We’ll have a whiskey and talk about the project,” says Shields.
“Or two whiskeys,” suggests Stewart.
Mariah Carey will help the NFL kick off its first-ever Christmas Gameday on Netflix on Dec. 25. The streamer announced on Thursday (Dec. 21) that MC will star in the opening segment setting up the day’s two games with a pre-taped performance of her perennial holiday season chart-topper “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” […]
Taylor Swift is not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white-veiled occasion, but she’s very much ready to be a part of newly engaged Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco‘s wedding.
The “Anti-Hero” singer was one of the first stars to publicly react to her longtime best friend’s engagement to the producer, news Gomez shared Wednesday night (Dec. 11) via an adorable post on Instagram. “forever starts now,” the Only Murders in the Building star had written, captioning a carousel of photos that began with a close-up of her ring, and included a snap of Blanco kissing her on the cheek.
In the comments, Swift joked, “yes I will be the flower girl.”
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Numerous other friends also commented messages of congratulations on the post, including Cardi B, Jennifer Aniston, Lily Collins, Gordon Ramsay, Suki Waterhouse, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Michaels and more. Blanco chimed in as well, writing, “Hey wait… that’s my wife.”
The news comes about a year and a half after Gomez and the “Eastside” musician started dating. The former first confirmed their relationship in December 2023, telling fans on Instagram, “He is my absolute everything in my heart.”
As the “Lose You to Love Me” artist’s friend of 15 years, Swift has been there for Gomez through it all. The two women first sparked a friendship around 2009, when both were dating Jonas brothers — Joe and Nick, respectively — and have stayed close ever since. The Wizards of Waverly Place alum attended multiple Eras Tour shows between its March 2023 kickoff and Dec. 8 finale in Vancouver, B.C., and both stars are quick to praise one another when given the chance.
“The most influential artist, for me, it is kind of Taylor,” Gomez said on SiriusXM in 2022. “Not because she’s my friend, but she has been an artist that can transition into so many different genres and she is able to do it seamlessly, and I admire that so much. And that’s so rare. I love her process, and I just admire all the work that she’s done. She’s definitely inspired me.”
That same year, Swift supported her bestie after the premiere of Gomez’s documentary, My Mind & Me. “So proud of you @selenagomez,” the “Karma” artist wrote on Instagram Stories at the time. “Love you forever.”
Ed Sheeran sometimes takes a bit of a break after an album/tour cycle. But After releasing two albums last year, – (Subtract) and Autumn Variations and touring the world for the past two years, the singer told Variety magazine that his next project is already in the can.
Sheeran told the magazine that the as-yet-untitled LP is already finished and that he’s shot two music videos for it, with plans to shoot two more early next year as he continues touring across India, China and the Middle East before returning to Europe next spring and summer.
The singer is planning a full-court promo push for the next LP after his = (Equal) LP’s release in the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the more subdued vibe on Subtract, which he said was “obviously a completely different record that didn’t really call for big pop stuff.”
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Asked what fans can expect next time around, Sheeran had some good news. “It feels like I’m getting back into big pop for the first time in a long time,” he said. “It’s quite exciting.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Sheeran talked about his latest collaboration with Love Actually‘s Richard Curtis, which began when the director showed the singer some early storyboards for his first animated project, That Christmas. “He asked if I wanted to write the music for it, and I said, ‘Cool,’” Sheeran said. “There was one scene, and I wrote a chorus for it, but didn’t hear anything back.’”
Then, after two years, Curtis asked Sheeran to finish the song called “Under the Tree” — which Ed said was the first “sad” Christmas tune he’s ever written – for the animated movie now streaming on Netflix. “It’s the one thing I’ve wanted to write,” Sheeran said of the tune in which he put himself in the place of a man waiting in vain for his dad to come home at Christmas. “I’d never seen the need [to write] a sad Christmas song until writing this one… this is quite a lot of people’s realities at Christmas.”
When Netflix decided to edit the song into the movie Sheeran told them he wasn’t really planning to do promo this year, but said if they wanted a video he’d do it if Curtis agreed to direct his first-ever music video. “I’ve felt that having him put his stamp on me doing a Christmas song would be kind of special to me,” said Sheeran.
Check out the “Under the Tree” video below.
Primus may have found their new guy and he’s a guy you already know. After the veteran band revealed in late October that longtime drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander had unexpectedly departed the group, they put out an open call for a new timekeeper and one of the musicians who threw his sticks into the ring […]
Mariah Carey was forced to cancel her planned Christmas Time show on Wednesday night (Dec. 11) at Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena after falling ill. In a note to fans posted just hours before showtime, Carey informed her Lambs that the show could not go on.
“Pittsburgh, I am sorry to say, I’ve come down with the flu,” the singer wrote. “It breaks my heart that I unfortunately have to cancel tonight’s show. I love you all so much.” The arena posted a note just before Carey’s announcing the cancellation and telling fans that they will receive an email with refund options.
WTAE spoke to some disappointed fans, who said missing out on the Christmas spectacular was definitely a bummer. “We didn’t get anything telling us that it was cancelled. We didn’t know until we arrived and we saw a paper you know when you get to the entry to get your ticket for it there was a paper taped on,” said a family that had traveled from Youngstown, Ohio.
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“I had my whole outfit picked out I was smooth. I was like man, she’s gonna see me, she gonna see me and she aint gonna see me that hurts,” said fan Anthony Mock. Fans had all kinds of feelings in the comments on Carey’s post, including one who showed off the sparkly nutcracker costume he planned to wear and another who has some motherly advice.
“Get well soon! Your health is the most important thing, so please take good care of yourself. Drink some chamomile tea to help you feel better! i know you were really looking forward to the show, but sometimes things happen,” they wrote. “Just remember, you love your fans, and they love you back. They’ll understand and won’t blame you Sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. Your health is the most important thing, so take the time you need to rest and recover. We can always reschedule once you’re better—wishing you a speedy recovery!”
Carey performed in Raleigh, N.C. on Monday, where she was informed on stage that her holiday classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” has hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 yet again.
“Last night on stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, I found out that ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ returned to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100,” Carey wrote alongside a repost of a fan video of her twins, Moroccan and Monroe, handing over a bouquet of celebratory flowers. “I couldn’t have dreamed of a better time or place to celebrate the news than on stage with my amazing fans, my kids and my #Christmastime tour family. I love you and am so grateful to you all,” Carey added.
Carey will have something else to celebrate this week as she recuperates: “All I Want” was also certified 16x Platinum by the RIAA. The singer’s next scheduled show is on Friday (Dec. 13) at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. The Christmas tour is slated to wind down with two more shows, on Dec. 15 in Belmont Park, NY and Dec. 17 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
