Frayed Thoughts on “Touch,” Random Access Memories’ Centerpiece

I’m still puzzling together my thoughts on Random Access Memories. Already, a couple of my least favorite songs have been seriously reevaluated as ones I enjoy, and the battle for best track still rages between Giorgio and Williams. But Williams absolutely has the album’s “best moment” in Touch, a towering epic with more grandiosity and pomp than any Daft Punk track ought to have.

If you haven't heard the album yet, but you have heard "Get Lucky," you're okay to dive right into "Touch," Daft Punk's collaboration with songwriter Paul Williams.

Less so than Paul Williams’ desperate opening or closing vocals, the robotic coo of “Hold on, if love is the answer, you’re home…” is easily the most gorgeous melodic line on Random Access Memories, and probably in Daft Punk’s career. It shouldn’t be a surprise; it’s the same kind of simplistic, uncomplicated sentiment with which Williams asked us why there are so many songs about rainbows.

But the rest of Williams’ vocal is far more bitter, uncomfortably recalling human contact long past and the empty promises of relationship. It’s a weird song about alienation, performed with Isaac Hayes-like instrumentation until suddenly it isn’t. The trumpet section is emotionally confusing; the song’s shifts from funk to jazz to chorale are sudden. Maybe the joy of touch (portrayed as a danceable ragtime jazz sequence?) ultimately leads to comfort in the chorus?

“If love is the answer, you’re home…hold on.”

Why “hold on?” Are we worried the narrator is not wanting to hold on? Sorry, obvious rhetorical question; let's try again. Are we telling him to be patient, or just not to give up? Williams’ vocal is weak, not forceful, and the spare loneliness of its a capella is a stark contrast to the massive production on the rest. Are we worried our narrator is about to commit suicide? Emotional suicide?

It ends on a version of the refrain that claims touch has “given too much to feel,” a sentiment more reminiscent of The Wall than The Muppet Show, indicating self-isolation as the result. It’s a weird emotional centerpiece for this album to have about the emptiness of contact; RAM will end on a song very literally about contact with aliens, but more about the excitement of discovery.

I probably have more to say about Random Access Memories, but I’m not sure if it’ll come in the form of reviews or in more incomplete little posts like this. I really want to write something about my odyssey through the entire David Bowie discography a few months ago, and I really need to write about Modern Vampires Of The City. The pop charts are flooding with R&B, and it'll be fun to take that on. And, of course, the year’s third “event” album in Yeezus is just around the corner, and I pretty much can’t help but write about Kanye West.

I’m excited to be writing again; expect more soon.