Stardust

One of dance music’s all-time greatest one-offs, Stardust recorded just a single track, but that release—1998’s “Music Sounds Better with You”, an effervescent filter-house anthem—put their name in the history books. It didn’t hurt that Stardust were a de facto Daft Punk side project: that duo’s Thomas Bangalter coproduced the record alongside Alan Braxe and released it on his Roulé label, ground central for the French Touch movement. The two musicians first linked up in the mid-’90s after Roulé issued Braxe’s 1997 single “Vertigo”. When Braxe got booked to play live at Paris’ Rex club, he enlisted Bangalter to accompany him, and the two recruited singer Benjamin Diamond to take the mic. Of the songs written for the set, the only one they put to tape, was “Music Sounds Better with You”, a lush, hypnotic floor-filler built atop a looped Chaka Khan sample. Heard on a sweaty dance floor, the song’s refrain—“I feel like music sounds better with you”—feels as ecstatic as love itself. Roulé’s 12-inch release ended up selling hundreds of thousands of copies before Virgin licensed the single and sold millions more. The song’s secret is its simplicity, so it’s fitting that, having reached perfection, Stardust scrapped their remaining demos and called it quits.