NEW YORK, Oct 11 — As ironic as it might sound, Pharrell Williams’ 2013 hit Happy was born out of sarcasm.
The Neptunes co-founder discussed his creative process in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1 ahead of the release of his biographical film Piece by Piece.
The 51-year-old multihyphenate recalled his collaborations with Daft Punk and Robin Thicke saying, “When I was about 40, that’s when Get Lucky, Blurred Lines, Happy, all of that was the same year.
“And these were all songs that were more commissions than they were just like, I woke up one day and decided I’m going to write about X, Y and Z.”
When it came to completing the soundtrack for Despicable Me 2, created with Heitor Pereira, and running out of ideas, he asked himself, “How do you make a song?”, and inspiration struck.
“It was only until you were out of ideas and you asked yourself a rhetorical question and you came back with a sarcastic answer. And that’s what Happy was.
“How do you make a song about a person that’s so happy that nothing can bring them down? And I sarcastically answered it and put music to it, and that sarcasm became the song. And that broke me.”
Happy has become one of the best-selling songs in history with over 13.9 million copies sold. Per Forbes and CNN, the track also went on to be declared the most-played song on British radio in the 2010s and even held the record for longest music video at one point, sitting at 24 hours long until Twenty One Pilots smashed the record in 2020 with a 177-day-long video.
Meanwhile, Williams discussed his forthcoming film, Piece by Piece, with director Morgan Neville, who also helmed the Mr Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
The unconventional biographical film depicts Williams and his life story in Lego animation.
Neville, 57, explained that the collaborative process for the film was also different.
“The thing that was different than say a normal documentary is normally somebody shares their story with you and then you figure out how to tell it, which I did, but then I showed it back to Pharrell and then he started writing songs based on my view of his story.
“And then it became this kind of circular conversation, creatively then about the entire film.”
Neville also convinced Williams to include his family in the film, which the star was on the fence about.
In a conversation with People at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, the singer said, “I was on the fence. I didn’t know if I really wanted to have my family in it, but, again, I turned everything over to him, so I followed his direction.”
Piece by Piece which premieres in US cinemas today, features Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and more voicing Lego minifigure versions of themselves.
