Justice Vs Simian - We Are Your Friends

2024-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

Justice Vs Simian made We Are Your Friends one of the anthems of mid-2000s electro house. It combines punchy beats with a sung pop melody, and its mood is infectious in the literal sense: a room full of strangers singing one line at each other.

Song Summary

The track began as “Never Be Alone”, a 2002 song by the English band Simian from their album We Are Your Friends, sung by Simon Lord. The French duo Justice, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, reworked it into a club track, keeping Lord’s vocal and building an electro frame around it, and the album title, itself drawn from the song’s lyric, became the title of the remix. Its theme is simple and warm: a promise of company, delivered as a chant.

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Tone

The track opens with a pulsating electronic beat and a synth riff that establish its dancefloor credentials straight away.

Verse: Vocal Entry

Simon Lord’s voice from the Simian original enters, set inside Justice’s beat rather than the band’s indie arrangement.

Build-up: Layering Elements

Percussion and synth layers are added, and the tension builds toward the chorus.

Chorus: Explosive Release

The title line arrives as a chant, repeated until it becomes the centrepiece of the track and the part every crowd sings back.

Bridge: Breakdown and Rebuild

Midway through, the track strips back to its core elements before slowly rebuilding, the tension and release of a record made for DJs.

Climax: Peak Energy

The final section brings everything together at full strength, a moment designed for unity on the dancefloor.

Concepts in Focus

We Are Your Friends is the rare remix that outgrew its source. Justice made it from Simian’s “Never Be Alone”; it first appeared in June 2003 on ED 002, the second release of the new Paris label Ed Banger Records, with Simian credited on vocals. In 2004 DJ Hell’s International DeeJay Gigolo Records issued it on a 12-inch with his own “Bavarian Gigolo Mix”, and in July 2006 Simian’s label Source, part of Virgin, released it as a UK single under the new title, with remixes by Lee Cabrera and Edison. Each step moved the remix further from its origin and closer to a song in its own right.

The hook is one line, the title, taken from the original lyric and made into a chant by repetition. Justice did not need to write a new melody; they needed to find the phrase that would carry a crowd and give it room.

The music video won Best Video at the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards. The presentation became famous for another reason: Kanye West walked on stage and interrupted it. In 2018 the clip was the last video played on MTV Dance before the channel was replaced.

Artistic Context

Justice released their debut album † on Ed Banger in 2007 and became one of the defining acts of French electronic music of that decade; this remix, on side A of their very first record, was where it started. Simian were Simon Lord, Alex MacNaghten, James Anthony Shaw and James Ford, and on their album the original “Never Be Alone” is a three-minute indie song. The 2006 single credits the writing to Augé, de Rosnay and Simian.

Impact and Reception

The 2006 single reached number 20 on the UK Singles Chart. The 2015 film We Are Your Friends took its title from the song, and in 2023 Dimitri Vegas and Steve Aoki reworked it as “Friends”. It has also been mashed up with Wolfgang Gartner’s “Illmerica” and used as a television theme and in advertising, which shows how far a remix made for a small Paris label has travelled.

Sonic Playground - infectious