Dave 1 and P-Thugg — the dapper duo best known for their modern funk project, Chromeo — have been friends their entire adult lives. The bond that has deepened over the past 30 years shines on their latest venture, Adult Contemporary.
Out Feb. 16, Adult Contemporary explores maturity through the lens of relationships — including their own. The duo wrote, produced, performed, and arranged every song on the album, which blends funky beats with cheeky lyrics.
But before they became Dave 1 and P-Thugg, David Macklovitch and Patrick Gemayel were a couple of skaters in Montreal making hip-hop in the '90s. In the decades since, they've garnered GRAMMY nominations for their album Head Over Heels and worked with A-list artists like D.R.A.M., Toro y Moi, and French Montana, while traveling the world.
As Chromeo, the duo's subtle yet efficacious humor — as well as their history of collectively riding the highs and lows life throws at them, as only close friends could — is reflected throughout their discography. Adult Contemporary is no exception: On the glitzy disco tune, "BTS," Macklovitch proudly sings, "Sometimes rest can be better than sex."
"The challenge for us is taking music that's made for the dance floor, but trying to infuse some sophistication and intelligence in it," Macklovitch reflects. "There was a lot of sophistication in the arrangements on this album. We're in a little bit of our Steely Dan double-breasted suits era."
Their evolution from teenage friends to synth icons reflects a journey enriched by lasting camaraderie and musical innovation.
"The music is as hungry and as raw as the first album, with, of course, the added value of everything we've learned in the last 20 years," Gemayel continues.
Read on to discover what the duo shared with GRAMMY.com on their enduring partnership, navigating the music scene, and their vibrant approach to life and art.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
*Why did you title this album Adult Contemporary?*
Macklovitch: This one is called Adult Contemporary because of two things. It's very lyrically cohesive. All the songs in general talk about mature relationships and different facets of mature relationships. From commitments to codependency to insomnia to ambiguousness to breakups with "Personal Effects," and so on.
Also, it's been 20 years since we put out our first album. So we're definitely in the adult period of our career. And also we really find the phrase "Adult Contemporary" hilarious 'cause it's a nod to the worst genre of music, but also, maybe the best, or the funniest one. We always felt it could have been the title of a men's magazine, or an erotic magazine in the seventies 'cause of "adult."
And so that play of like adult contemporary, aka really mushy, and kind of sappy… but also adult contemporary, like edgy and adults only. We thought it was a very Chromeo kind of contrast. It works on many levels.
Also, our favorite Hall And Oates song is "Adult Education." There’s always a nod.
Given you guys have been "adults" in terms of age for a while now, what makes this album more adult compared to others?
Gemayel: I don't know if it's an adult album. The subjects on this album are mature and adult, but the music goes back to our first two records.
We get asked about [longevity] a lot. How do you keep your career going for so long? How do you keep the friendship going so long? How do you keep a duo going for so long? We're at a stage where these subjects are now in our repertoire and our vocabulary, but our hunger and our desire to keep making music is still the same as day one.
Macklovitch: We went back to the raw feel of the Fancy Footwork era. Also, our last two albums were more collaborative. This is one where P. and I did basically everything. We had other people play on the record, but we wrote and produced everything ourselves. But then we were able to inject a lot of the experience that we've acquired along the way.
After 30 years of friendship, what has it been like to become adults alongside one another?
Macklovitch: We were at each other's eighteenth birthdays. We were at each other's thirtieth birthdays. We went through so many pivotal moments of life together. I remember when I applied to grad schools, and P's the one who drove me to the different post offices in New York City to drop off my applications.
We went to the GRAMMYs together. We went to the JUNOS in Canada together. Most of the countries we've been to, we visited them together for the first time.
Gemayel: Yeah pivotal moments. Every record we do is a pivotal moment. Us meeting is a pivotal moment. That's what keeps us together, going strong, and still wanting to release records.
There's something new every day. Every day there's a pivotal moment. Yes, of course, I remember the day Dave moved out of Montreal to go to Columbia. I helped him move, and we did the road trip together. Or the time we got arrested in the car going to Florida. There's a lot. But for me, it's a continuation. It's an accumulation of pivotal moments.
It's not measured by the birthday parties or the album releases. Every day offers that same experience of "I'm glad you're my best friend."
Macklovitch: That’s a great way to say it. Another thing about the adult theme of the album is that there's been this fixation on youth for the last five or six years. There are all these really funny viral TikToks of Gen Z kids being ageist on purpose, which I find hilarious.
But everybody agrees. Youth is dumb.
Your youth was miserable. My youth was miserable. Youth is dumb. Youth is the worst time. What was happening culturally in the last few years is that you had all these like adult corporations or business interests or cultural movements fixating on kids. And it's absurd. It's supposed to be the other way around.
When you were a kid, you were looking up to people. You're looking up to your older brothers, your older brother's friends. You were looking up to an older skater, or you're looking up to Nas, or you're looking up to a rock band. These are your north stars. These are your guiding lights, and it shouldn't be the other way around.
Who was the best moment of the GRAMMYs? Tracy Chapman, and, by the way, the Gen Z kids will be the first ones to say that. "Oh, my God! Iconic" Tracy Chapman. Joni Mitchell. Annie Lennox. They stole the show.
Kids need OGs to look up to. Look at Miley Cyrus. She's 31. She's at the top of her game. She's had the best song of her career: "Flowers" is the only song I really love of hers. That one transcends, and it goes into this universal, timeless category.
Gemayel: Killer Mike is our age, and he was out and proud. "Don't tell me I'm too old."
Macklovitch: This is the Zeitgeist, my friends.
Why did you veer away from making everything yourselves for the last two albums? And then what brought you back?
Macklovitch: Every album we make is a reaction to the previous album. It's almost like having a conversation with your own body of work. When we did White Women, we had never collaborated with anybody, and we wanted to expand the sound, expand the circle, and try other features. It was super exciting, and that did really well.
Then we went into Head Over Heels. Truth be told, We had a really nice album budget. So we were like, "Let's go, Rolls Royce. Let's get all these big [people]."
We moved to LA to make it. We did this expensive Los Angeles album. We had heard so much about the LA session writer/producer world. We were curious because we're just two little dorks from Montreal by way of New York.
We've done everything by ourselves our whole life. We wanna know how the sausage is made. So we went and saw that, and It was cool. We learned so much. We made great friendships, and we were able to fulfill our dreams like having The-Dream on a song.
But then, once that's done, and then the pandemic starts and P and I are together, we're like, "You know what? Let's go back to the essence." We don't wanna be with anybody in a room. Not because they're gonna give us Covid. We gotta go back to quality time. The two of us.
Gemayel: Like Dave said, every album is a reaction to our previous album. But it's a reaction to our full career. We're filling the gaps. And that's again, longevity. "How do you keep this exciting?" You always look back and be like, "We did this. We did this. We did that." We don't rest on our laurels. We still have something to prove. How do we complete this narrative of the Chromeo career that we hope is gonna last until we're in the hospital making beats in a bed?
What was it like taking the experience you had in L.A. with Head Over Heels back to the more internal process of making Adult Contemporary?
Gemayel: It's great. It's amazing. We're collecting tools as we go in our career. Music, vocabulary, tricks. Expand our vocabulary all the time. We started collecting records, figuring out how songs are made, what funk music is, how to dissect it, how to study it. We just keep collecting stuff along the way.
Macklovitch: I think it helped the lyrical consistency of the album, too. When you write with other people there are five people in a room that have to sign off on every lyric. So I think when I was bringing lyrics to P on this album, we were really editing them together.
A lot of our songs could get too cringy. It could get too Weird Al Yankovic. You really have to ride the line. It's much harder to do that than to write sad boy music. So P and I go through the lyrics, and we parse the lyrics together, and we take out the stuff that looks like it's too overthought.
I think working with other people and having that high standard in rooms with like five or six people with strong opinions — It helped our dynamic as well.
The one guest artist on the album is La Roux who sang on "Replacements." What is it like to work with her? Also, I heard an instance where it sounds like you interpolated the vocal melody from her song "I’m Not Your Toy," into "I Don’t Need A New Girl." How did working with her influence the album beyond her vocal feature?
Macklovitch: It's great to work with her. She's super opinionated. She's a very thorough perfectionist. We've had a 15-year friendship with her.
Last year she came out at Coachella, and we did a funk version of "Bulletproof." But then people liked it so much that we had to release it.
We make the collaboration really organic and multi-faceted. So when you say that you hear her in other bits of the album, it's really cool. I didn't even have "I'm Not Your Toy" in mind, but it's real when the listener hears it. Not necessarily when the author thinks about it.
So the fact that you hear it makes it valid. Doesn't matter if we thought about it or not. Cause who knows? Who knows what’s within my subconscious? Maybe it was there somewhere.
It’s like the tree falling in the woods philosophical exercise. It becomes real when someone else acknowledges it.
Macklovitch: Music is a listener-oriented discipline. When we play live, people ask us, "Yo, you must be so excited." We always answer we're excited, but we're only excited if the crowd’s having a good time. It's really about you guys.
When P and I play a show we're like two chefs. The restaurant is packed. The stakes are high. There are a couple of Bon Appétit journalists in the room. We're stressed. We want to give you the best meal that we can give you.
So you're asking us if we're excited. Do you go into the kitchen and be like, "Hey, chef! Are you excited?" They’ll be like "Can't talk. Busy." That's how we play a show. It's about you. It's not about us, and if you've had a great time at the show, then we can kick back after the show. We did our job.
Two strong themes from this album are gratitude and contentment. How did the gratitude and the contentment that you feel around your friendship fuel this album?
Gemayel: It's a little bit like I said before. We find pivotal moments every day. Whether you’re closing a show, doing accounting, thinking about the stage setup and how we can afford it. Or thinking about new ideas for songs, demos, patch sounds, melodies. Every moment that you get to work towards a goal is a great moment for me.
It's in the continuum. I think that not resting on your laurels is the Chromeo motto. Never do that. So how you stay focused is you enjoy every little bit of annoying and fun moments of your career.
Macklovitch: There are a lot of tribulations that we go through that allow us to always stay humble and never take things for granted. It always keeps us hungry.
We always wanted to have a GRAMMY nomination. We got a GRAMMY nomination, but it's like for the nerdiest category — Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical — which actually suits us so well. But, of course, we're against Beck. Of course we didn't win the GRAMMY. So now we gotta get another one.
Or we'll play a show that's like this triumphant show and we feel amazing. We're on the high. Then we gotta go do a corporate DJ set. You're lucky when you have those, but it might be like the Christmas lunch party for some company somewhere, and it's super awkward.
For every success, there's always a really funny episode that grounds us. That keeps us hungry all the time.
Gemayel: The way our music is made gives you an insight into how we survive for that long. You put humor into everything. So I sometimes prefer the bad moments because we just end up laughing and making a thing out of it. You just gotta roll with the punches. That's what having a good partner is all about.
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