NPR’s Scott Simon talks with David Macklovitch and Patrick Gemayel of Chromeo about their new album, “Adult Contemporary,” and navigating modern love.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Adult contemporary can sometimes mean easy listening on the FM dial or R&B ballads from the ’70s or ’80s. But it’s taken on a whole new meaning for the electro funk duo, Chromeo.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “(I DON’T NEED A) NEW GIRL”)
CHROMEO: (Singing) I don’t need a new, ooh. Girl, I feel so taken by you. And I know I played myself one time or two, ooh.
SIMON: Chromeo’s latest album is called “Adult Contemporary.” The duo joins us now, David “Dave 1” Macklovitch and Patrick “P-Thugg” Gemayel. Gentlemen, thanks very much for being with us.
DAVID MACKLOVITCH: Hello.
PATRICK GEMAYEL: Thank you for having us.
SIMON: What’s that term, adult contemporary, mean to you?
MACKLOVITCH: Well, we always thought it could have been the name of, like, an erotic men’s magazine in the ’70s. So we tried to play around that double entendre of maturity, but also sexiness.
SIMON: Give me just a moment here to advise our listeners. If their children listening, you might want to divert them. Go ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
MACKLOVITCH: Should I repeat what I said?
SIMON: Oh, no. Oh, no. Don’t – no need to repeat it. We got it.
MACKLOVITCH: OK. All right. Well, yeah, so the idea of having something a little bit sultry but also mature at the same time.
SIMON: And what inspires your sound? Why did you want to do this?
MACKLOVITCH: I mean, from the beginning, we’ve drawn from electro funk music of the ’70s and ’80s and tried to blend it with, like, contemporary dance and electronic sounds. And so we’ve been doing this now for 20 years. This new album has come out 20 years to the day since our very first record.
SIMON: Patrick, what would you say? What inspires your sound?
GEMAYEL: I mean, we’ve always been influenced heavily by funk music. So on this album, we sort of went back to our first two albums’…
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