Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by @goldendaze_illustration

Talking with Beats 1’s Matt Wilkinson Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker revealed his top five favorite songs on Apple Music.

1. Daft Punk’s ‘Tha Funk’

“I don’t know if it hit me straight away,” Parker shares of the song he first heard the song on Australian music television program Rage when he was about 10 years old.

“I was definitely intrigued by the dog-man video clip,” he then adds, “I was like, ‘wow this is a really different thing. I think it really sunk into me later in life how great it was… It’s a classic, it’s amazing!”

PArker has previously shared that Daft Punk are Number One on the list of bands he wishes he could collaborate with, something he reconfirms in the interview.

His hot then asks if Parker has ever met the French duo before

“Yes!,” Kevin reveals, “but I didn’t know it was them! It’s a funny story actually. [Tame Impala] were playing a show in Paris and our friends MGMT were there. And I was standing with Andrew [VanWyngarden] and some other guys. And I was like, ‘Hey Andrew have you heard the guys from Daft Punk are here?’ And Andrew was like, ‘Oh yea this is [Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo].’ I was like, ‘F – are you serious!?”

2. Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘L’Hôtel Particulier’

‘L’Hôtel Particulier’ appears on the noted French composer and actor Serge Gainsbourg 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson.

“It’s one of the great concept albums,” Parker relates. “I think just the mood that it paints and everything about it – the sounds, his voice, the instruments, the rhythms, the grooves – everything! It’s just like palpable.”

3. Kanye West’s ‘I Am A God’

“Yeezus was the album were I fully clicked on Kayne West,” Parker recounts.

“I guess I learnt that hip hop can be minimal and I just love his sentiment on this song,” he continues. “It makes me think he’s serious but he’s not. I love it.”

“I was instantly taken aback by how genuine he was,” Parker shared of meeting West in person. “He was totally just genuine, having a laugh. He’s obsessed with music.”

4. Led Zeppelin’s ‘Good Times Bad Times’

“Track one of their first album,” Parker notes of the Led Zeppelin I opener. “It was a watershed moment. They were the missing piece for me between rock from the Sixties and rock from the Eighties. I never knew where they joined up. [Then hearing the song I thought to myself,] ‘Oh I get it, it’s Led Zeppelin!‘”

“[The drums] are amazing,” he enthused, “it’s the gold standard for drum playing, for drum sound, for everything.”

5. Portishead’s ‘Machine Gun’

“This song is just so inventive despite being so minimal,” Tame Impala‘s mastermind remarks before closing out the interview. “It’s one of those things that if I ever hear it I just have to stop what I’m doing and sit down. I just have such a reverence for this song.”

You can subscribe to Apple Music and listen to the interview here.