Music artist Pharrell Williams divulged the surprising origin for his optimistic bop "Happy," written for the soundtrack of the Dreamworks animated film Despicable Me 2.
Williams showed up with filmmaker Morgan Neville for an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to discuss their latest collaboration, Piece by Piece, an upcoming biographical documentary film about the musician's life and career rendered in Lego animation.
The 13-time Grammy winner, who also won the Academy Award in 2014 for Best Original Song for "Happy," revealed that writing the uptempo crowd-pleaser "broke him."
Lowe asked Williams to recount a time in his life when he felt "ready to grow" and to "embrace life" differently. Williams replied that it was when he was 40 around the time his commissioned songs "Get Lucky," "Blurred Lines," and "Happy" hit the airwaves.
He expanded on the pitfalls of rising to the occasion for penning commissioned tunes and said:
“I had written 9 songs that were rejected."
"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."
Williams continued:
"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.”
You can watch the discussion here.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
People were fascinated by the songwriting process for "Happy" despite its bitter beginnings.
He waxed philosophic and said that "the universe is a part of everything that we do," adding:
"It's so crazy for us to think like individuals everything comes from us. Your ideas and everything that you get is coming from a library of existence."
"Nothing is new under the sun. In fact, the sun that look up at every day is one of trillions upon trillions upon trillions of other stars."
Williams explained that "once you understand the insignificance of yourself, then you understand what your actual significance is."
"Happy" was written, produced, and performed by Williams, and was the only single on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack in 2013.
The song peaked at number 1 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was the best-selling song in 2014 with 6.45 million copies sold that year.
However, listeners eventually grew weary of the song, including the artist himself.
When a user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote “No song annoyed me like Happy by Pharrell did, " Williams shared the post and replied, “Same.”
Piece by Piece is currently playing in theaters to a positive reception from critics and audiences.
Rotten Tomatoes describes the film as, "A highly unusual twist on the documentary format that somehow works seamlessly, this kaleidoscopic overview of Pharrell Williams' career is a lively testament to the power of self-belief."
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