The year is 2247, but it’s a 2247 imagined in 1987. A chrome-plated car whirls through a dark desert. The neon-glow of a cityscape expands on the horizon.
The car begins to be enveloped in the now blinding intensity of this technicolour metropolis. The wheels spin faster, and the pulsing, synth-driven track on the radio gets louder and louder.
In the driver’s seat, the car’s sole occupant smiles as they’re fully immersed within the multihued lights that streak past the windshield.
Tailor-made to evoke this precise feeling, M83’s Midnight City bottled a distinctive retro-nostalgia, stirring something deep within millions of listeners across the genre aisles in the early 2010s.
Its the song's continuing ability to conjure these part-sentimental and part-joyful emotions, nearly fifteen years after its release, that is key to understanding its impact. It's now hailed as one of the most memorable and affecting tracks of the 2010s.
The lead single of M83’s sprawling 2011 double-album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Midnight City’s fusion of real and electronic instruments (and its unshakeable vocal-chop lead-line) expressed to all that this was an artist happy to take elements from disparate styles to make something wholly unique.
Although dominated by a kaleidoscopic array of analogue synth sounds, the huge stadium-ready backing vocal and live drum bedrock led the track to be an equally comfortable fit on the playlist of your indie rock-obsessed friend’s house-party as it was on your EDM DJ buddy’s aftershow.
Perhaps this is the reason why Midnight City has long been M83’s most popular track - with over 1.37 billion streams, at time of writing, on Spotify alone.
Frequently deployed across advertising campaigns, film trailers and soundtracks, in the UK, Midnight City became more recognised due its use as the theme to reality TV staple Made in Chelsea and its prominence during the BBC's 2012 Olympics coverage.
For gamers, its dynamic mix of both propulsion and instrospection led it be a sought-after listening highlight among the multi-million-selling Grand Theft Auto V’s internal radio stations.
And, whether it’s within a computer-generated world or the real one, Midnight City is the ultimate tune to night drive to.
But for M83’s alter-ego, Anthony Gonzalez, the success of this one song proved something of a millstone as the 2010s wore on.
“For me, the struggle with being a successful artist with that album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, and especially with that track, Midnight City, is that all of a sudden, I had this huge EDM following,” Anthony told Consequence in 2023.
Although Gonzalez later clarified that he had nothing against the EDM genre, or its fans, per say, he did go on to reveal that the club-friendly throb of Midnight City was a dimension that everyone continued to associate with him. This caused frustration, as actually M83 was always intended to be a far more genre-agnostic entity.
Subsequently, further M83 records, Junk, DSVII and Fantasy made a concerted effort to pull far away from that perception.
“There’s a lot of people who discovered my music through Midnight City, the biggest hit for me, and it triggered something weird in me. I thought I should maybe go far from it,” Anthony told DIY Magazine.
“It was a fantastic thing for me to have such a hit song which so many people loved, that you can play live and know that the crowd response will be great, but do I want to try doing that again? Especially because Midnight City was an accident."
The M83 project originated when the Antibes, France-born Anthony Gonzalez formed an indie rock group after a sports injury put pay to his hopes of becoming a professional footballer. Alongside friend and musical accomplice, Nicolas Fromageau, their outfit was dubbed ‘M83' after a galaxy some 15 million light-years from Earth.
With an inventive spirit - and hunger for new tech - coupled with a knack for writing brilliant ear-worms - M83’s first self-titled album was initially released on Paris label, Gooom in 2001 before being re-released by Daniel Miller’s Mute Records in 2005.
Over four subsequent albums (released across a variety of labels), M83 continued to widen its musical language. Nicolas left the group prior to the recording of third album Before the Dawn Heals Us, but multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Anthony’s artistic identity would become far more fluid, incorporating elements of shoe-gaze, ambient music, dream pop, electronica as well as more straightforward indie rock into M83's lexicon.
He also learned how to command a big venue with his voice, by dent of support slots with Kings of Leon and The Killers.
The continued pulling on disparate genre threads would ultimately culminate in M83’s superb fifth record, Saturdays = Youth, released in 2008.
On this '80s-indebted record, Anthony fully plunged headlong into the the formative influences that inspired him as a teenager (Tears for Fears, Ultravox etc) and married the music to a lyrical theme of nostalgia.
"I think that '80s music is such a brilliant period for music history. It was the occasion for me to do a tribute to this '80s music,” Gonzalez told Analogue Magazine “It’s a tribute to my teenage years because the main theme of the album is being a teenager, and being a teenager means a lot to me."
But it was Saturdays = Youth’s successor which steamrolled M83 into the the ears of popular culture. It elevated these more sensual touch points onto a massive, cinematic plane.
The stellar double-album, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming was released in 2011. M83’s sixth, the album was immediately acclaimed by critics and fans alike. Amongst its tremendous array of tracks, such impressive work as the gorgeously evocative Wait, the blinding My Tears Are Becoming a Sea, the rising textures and triumphant vocal of Outro, and of course, our track in focus, Midnight City.
“I love ambitious projects, big sounding records,” Gonzales told The Line of Best Fit. “So this was the right time for me to do a double album. I felt confident enough to make one.”
Co-produced by Anthony alongside seasoned musical polymath (and Beck’s formidable bassist) Justin Meldal-Johnsen, the record’s widescreen sound was spurred by a move from his native France to Los Angeles. This leap was inspired party because Anthony was hoping that he could further develop a side-career of soundtracking films.
It’s these celluloid-accompanying aspirations that perhaps are responsible for the spectacle, big feelings and visual-provoking grandeur of the record.
"I'd spent 29 years in the south of France," Anthony told The Guardian at the time. "I needed to evolve in a different country and different culture. America has always been very fascinating for me. Los Angeles is a great city for music, and the weather is perfect."
Alongside his ambitions as a film composer, the expansive new record rippled with the many facets of California.
“I would rent a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, and I was just making music there, by myself,” Gonzalez explained to The Guardian. “Those were the best moments. It was a good way to be inspired by something else, the energy from a different landscape."
It was during this outpouring that the sublime Midnight City was quickly birthed, written in a sudden flurry of playful energy.
Allegedly, it took just three hours to knock into shape.
"It was the easiest song I ever wrote, and it's the most popular," he told Q Magazine. "And that really scares me! Because now, every time I spend more than a few days on a track, I think, 'well, that's not gonna be a single.’”
The track was based around a slightly silly experiment in which Anthony recorded some of his own vocal chops, saturated them in distortion and then pitched them into a frequency more commonly reserved for lead synth sounds.
This oddly-pitched vocal was then used as the raw material for a repetitive four-note lead melody, which soared its way atop a rolling chord sequence that drove steadily and repeatedly through a G, Bm, A and Em structure.
Emulating how Anthony achieved this sound has become a fascinating music production exercise, a good example of which can be found in the YouTube video below
Anthony continued to develop this quirky idea in his new California home, working to process the infectious four-note riff into its final form. It would sear itself quickly into the mind of anyone who heard it.
“When I first made that, I felt stupid,” Anthony told Pitchfork. “It's my voice under heavy distortion, and I was feeling so dumb doing those high-pitched vocals while my girlfriend was sleeping downstairs. Now, I love it.”
Anthony’s feelings of isolation, perched at the edge of a city thronging with life, was imbued into Midnight City’s scene-setting lyrics
Waiting in the car
Waiting for a ride in the dark
Drinking in the lounge
Following the neon signs
Waiting for a word
Looking at the milky skyline
The city is my church
It wraps me in its blinding twilight
While its thundering chorus, led by Gonzalez’s processed vocal riff, was rich with sonic texture, the verse (also rotating the same chord sequence, albeit more subtly) was far sparser, allowing his breathy, reverb-soaked lead vocal to take centre stage.
The contrast between the verse’s breezy, almost detached quality and the chorus’s sense of massive release, was a classic dynamic trick, and it was key to Midnight City’s effectiveness.
The louder and more emotionally-wrought backing vocals - inspired by the arena-filling indie rock icons he’d been touring with - were perfect counterbalances to the hazy lead vocal.
Although many of its song ideas were birthed in solitude, by all accounts the sessions for Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming were a highly collaborative affair, with numerous musicians and technical personnel in play to help Anthony (and Justin) wrangle the perfect sounds for the album.
Then fixed M83 personnel Loïc Maurin and Morgan Kibby took on drums and vocals, piano and keyboards respectively.
Recorded at Sunset Sound, The Sound Factory and Electro-Vox in Los Angeles, and with some sessions at Anthony's Antibes-based studio, the record starred a revolving door of players.
“All of the songs [on Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming] were written primarily by Anthony Gonzalez and myself, with musical and lyrical contributions from [keyboardist] Morgan Kibby, and lyrical contributions from [Anthony’s older brother] Yann Gonzalez,” Justin told the TalkBass forum in an insightful post back in 2012.
“Each piece of music usually evolved from a live ‘jam’ in the studio that Anthony and I would do. This would take shape as the roughest components of a song in [Ableton] Live. Then we would gradually and progressively chip away at the marble, so to speak.”
“I really tried to play different kinds of instruments, instruments I’ve never used before, like the guitar, saxophone, flute. This is the first album where the spectrum of the music is larger and wider,” Anthony told Consequence.
To create some of that vast sense of space, reverbs used in the mix of Midnight City, and deployed across the record’s 22 tracks, included a Lexicon PCM70, Yamaha Rev 7, Eventide H3000 and Demeter RealVerb.
While specifics as to what gear was definitely used on Midnight City are hard to confirm, the album’s co-producer, Justin Meldal-Johnsen did share more details as to what was in play during the making of Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming on that TalkBass forum thread.
For Gonzalez, a longtime collector of iconic analogue synths, a favoured weapon of choice was the Roland Jupiter-8 and the Korg Arp 2600. On Hurry Up We’re Dreaming, Gonzales expanded his hardware synth arsenal even further with a Yamaha CS-80 and Roland JX-3P.
Undoubtedly one - or perhaps a fusion of all - of these were responsible for Midnight City's underlying thrum during its verse and its more splashy lead textures.
To capture Anthony’s characterful vocals on Midnight City (and across the album) a Peluso 2247 was relied on as the main vocal microphone, this was fed into an Aurora Audio GT2Q mic amplifier while an API 550A was called upon for EQing duties. Compression was provided by a Purple Audio 1176.
Midnight City's beats were crafted via a fusion of a live kit and electronic sequences, programmed using Ableton Live and Native Instruments’ Battery. The live drums were supplied by M83’s versatile and impactful drummer Loïc Maurin, while the drum machine used is unmistakably a Roland TR-707
An Elektron Machinedrum and a Dave Smith Tempest drum machine were also frequently in the mix at various points on the album to provide contrasting rhythmic flavours.
Perhaps the most affecting moment of Midnight City is the blinding saxophone solo that emerges near the song’s huge-sounding crescendo, performed by famed soul musician James King of Fitz and the Tantrums.
“Sometimes a song needs an element to be finished,” Gonzalez said of the gorgeous sax solo to The Guardian. “You know that this element has been overused in the past and is considered cliched or cheesy, but the song needs it. With this album, the whole idea was to do something and have no regrets."
The final song was obviously a beast. Intensely hooky, the riff burned into the minds of all who heard it like an after-image. It was obvious that it would need to be the record's lead single.
Midnight City was full of musical colour and had the sense of scale that would resonate with an arena-sized crowd, yet it had a piercingly intimate sensibility underpinning its musical and lyrical choices.
“I had a good feeling when I wrote it,” Anthony told Elle Magazine “It was catchy to me - I was dancing to it in my studio.”
Upon its release as a single on 16th August 2011, the track - as predicted - soon became inescapable. As the decade rolled on, Midnight City’s ubiquity only increased.
A scour of the brilliant Fleur & Manu-directed music video’s YouTube comments indicates the powerful twist of nostalgic emotions M83’s biggest song brings out of listeners still. “This song is from a memory that all of us can't quite remember”, wrote one user nearly a decade after the song's release, while another, in 2020, said “Nostalgia is the best feeling and at the same time, the worst”
And, although Gonzalez has been disparaging about the impact of the song’s cultural footprint affecting the broader perception of him as an artist, he has subsequently learned to be at peace with the song that launched him into ears of millions.
“Every night that I play Midnight City for fans I feel like a lucky guy,” Anthony told Tokyo Weekender. “So I feel free to try new things, but the success of that song will never go away; it’s part of me.
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