Songfacts®:

• Julian Casablancas, the lead singer of The Strokes, supplies the vocals on this track. "We are both great fans and we learned that he wanted to meet us, Daft Punk explained to French publication Le Nouvel Observateur: "It was this demo that was lying, he came, he listened and he was thoroughly! It has a kind of gift. We, basically, we love rock and the concept of the rock band, but there were so many strong things that the emergence of a new voice at one point became difficult. Recently, The Strokes and MGMT - with dimensions and sensitivities - succeeded. Julian has a punk rock side, a super strong emotional impact in its melodies. It was important to have this album to feel surrounded by our contemporaries."
• Daft Punk's Manuel de Homem-Christo told Stryker of Los Angeles radio station KROQ about Julian Casablancas' contribution to the track. "We met in our studio back in 2010 when we were still working on Tron through a mutual friend and collaborator," he explained. "He actually asked our friend if we wanted to have a cup of coffee and just meet and have a chat. Of course we said yes, because Thomas and me have been the biggest fans of the Strokes since the '90s. So we met, and we had an instrumental demo on the shelf that we wanted to use for [the album], and as soon as he heard it he jumped on it and was really excited. It was a big surprise for us."
  
  De Homem-Christo continued: "It really became what 'Instant Crush' is today, which is the idea of something hybrid, which is different from things we had done ourselves and anything he'd ever performed as well. Getting out of our comfort zone was something the three of us wanted to do, for sure."
• The song's music video was directed by Warren Fu and shot on 35mm film on location and on sound stages in Los Angeles. Fu, who started his career as a concept designer for Lucas Films, previously co-helmed the "Lose Yourself to Dance" clip as well as creating Random Access Memories' album artwork and illustrations.
  
  The visual, which was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the 1960's TV series The Twilight Zone, depicts the love affair between mannequins in a museum, with the male waxwork bearing a striking similarity to track collaborator, Julian Casablancas.
• Australian singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia covered this for her 2015 album Male. The record is a collection of covers of songs originally sung by male artists. Imbruglia told Entertainment Weekly of the song: "I wanted to cover something very different than what I sound like. I didn't actually know what the song was about, so I went online and read the lyrics. I had no idea it was this beautiful love story! I wanted to strip it back so you could hear that."