Daft Punk At Coachella? A Serious Investigation

I know that Daft Punk will headline Coachella 2017.

How do I know? Well, I’m glad you’re skeptical enough in my knowledge to ask!

Has Daft Punk been rumored to headline every year for the past decade, ever since their 2007 performance? Yes. Have they given any indication that they’ll play Coachella? No. Have there been any hints at a tour? Also, no. Have they specifically clarified in interviews that they will not play live shows until they release another album? Heck yes they did!

But whaddaya expect? Of course they’re just keeping us on our toes. They’re Daft mother-effin Punk! The Mysterious & Masked Mixing Maestros, The Robotic and Recondite Rulers of the Repeated Riff, The Enigmatic Electronic Emperors, The Perplexing Parisian Performing Party! You just never know what to expect with these guys.

I’m not pulling your leg here, folks. I’ve got a lot of evidence here that they’re gonna headline Coachella 2017! Lookie here:

When was their first tour and live album? 1997.

When was their second (and most recent) tour and live album? 2007.

2007. See the pattern here?

Exactly. Both of these tours were after 1996, the year in which The Nutty Professor, starring Eddie Murphy, was released.

Eddie Murphy received much praise for his nuanced portrayal of the titular character of The Nutty Professor, a morbidly obese university professor (“Sherman Klump”) who struggles with drug abuse and eventually catfishes one of his students.

In the film, Professor Klump’s shame over his excessive weight gives him severe depression and causes disturbing dreams, ultimately pushing him to take drastic measures. In what appears to be a suicide attempt, he ingests an experimental drug from his laboratory, which causes a rapid and incredibly dangerous weight loss of 300 pounds in a single day.

Klump survives this horrific episode, but the sudden change causes Klump to develop severe multiple personality disorder. His most commonly embodied secondary personality is named “Buddy Love”, and under this guise Eddie Murphy’s character has repeated sessions of unprotected sex with multiple women at a time. His alter ego tries to seduce one of the students enrolled in his college course, but his drug abuse and addiction to unsafe sexual habits thwarts this attempt. After committing battery on a coworker who attempts a public intervention regarding Klump’s dangerous drug habits, Murphy’s character overdoses at an awards ceremony in which he is being honored for his professorial work. Shortly thereafter, he has intense a mental breakdown wherein he immediately regains all his weight, a scene that can only be described as harrowing and gruesome. When he recovers, Klump’s friends and coworkers tell him that the whole time all he had to be was himself, that they love him for the overweight professor he really is at heart.

This PG-rated film received generally positive reviews from critics and became a box office success, grossing $128 million over a 5 month run in theaters in 1996.

After a series of disappointing bombs in the mid-90s, The Nutty Professor’s success vaulted Eddie Murphy back to his rightful spot on the A-list, this time for good.

From The Nutty Professor to the present day, how many live action films has Eddie Murphy played a prominent role in? I’m sure you already know the answer, but in case you’d forgotten the oft-overlooked Meet Dave, the answer is 19 movies.

Let us take a closer look at the 17th of these films, the most recent comedic masterwork from Murphy’s career, A Thousand Words. In this blockbuster, Eddie Murphy plays a man who says one thousand words. Hilarious stuff. But wait…doesn’t this A Thousand Words business sound familiar?

That’s right, there’s also “a thousand words” spoken by some robot voice thingy in Daft Punk’s classic song, “Technologic”! 872 words, to be exact. Adding 872 words to A Thousand Words gets us 1872 words. Add 128 to that (for the $128 million domestic gross of The Nutty Professor) and we get 2000, add 17 to that because A Thousand Words was Murphy’s 17th post-T.N.P. live-action film role, and what do we get?

That’s right. A complex number puzzle with digit components of 2, 0, 1, and 7. What could these numbers mean?

You want my theory? Well, added up, these digits form “10”. Guess what folks: in April 2017, it will have been 10 years since Daft Punk’s most recent tour.

Could this be the confirmation electronic music fans have been eagerly awaiting? Guess we won’t know til either good ol’ Guy-Manuel and Thomas (or our friends over at Goldenvoice) confirm this Coachella gig, officially!

Better preorder your tickets to the desert now, because when those big boisterous bassline bot-boys are announced as headliners, you’ll need to “Get Lucky” if you want a chance to snag a ticket! You better believe those weekend passes will be sold faster than you can say “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”!

Written by Matt Sater