Daddy

James Franco has long balanced an array of creative and intellectual pursuits—actor, author, poet, artist, filmmaker, academic, activist—yet 2011 marked his entry into music. That year he teamed with Tim O'Keefe to launch the indie-rock duo Daddy, whose electronic-driven sound probes personal and cultural obsessions with time, space, and character as intently as it does sonic texture. The pair first crossed paths as art students at the Rhode Island School of Design and later collaborated on the Endless Idaho installation at Los Angeles’ Gagosian Gallery several months prior to forming Daddy in late 2011. Franco supplies lyrics and vocals while O’Keefe handles the instrumentation; their first recording, the EP MotorCity, appeared in September 2012. In 2014 Franco released the poetry collection Directing Herbert White, whose verses on his longstanding admiration for the Smiths shaped Daddy’s subsequent work. The duo composed and tracked the song cycle Let Me Get What I Want, weaving multiple tributes to the Smiths and enlisting former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke for the sessions. The resulting album surfaced in early 2016 alongside a companion film of music videos for its tracks, among them the advance single “This Charming Man.”