Pharrell Williams is sharing the emotional journey behind his 2013 hit “Happy.” In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, the Neptunes co-founder delved into the creative process of the song, just ahead of the release of his biographical film Piece by Piece.
“When I was about 40, that’s when ‘Get Lucky,’ ‘Blurred Lines,’ ‘Happy,’ all of that was the same year,” the 51-year-old multihyphenate recalled regarding his collaborations with Daft Punk and Robin Thicke, respectively. “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.”
During the interview, Williams recounted finishing the soundtrack for Despicable Me 2 with Heitor Pereira and hitting a creative block, as reported by PEOPLE.
He questioned, “How do you make a song?” and soon found the inspiration that led to his hit track “Happy.”
“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 said. “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 ever, with over 13.9 million copies sold.
It was declared the most-played song on British radio in the 2010s and once held the record for the longest music video at 24 hours, until Twenty One Pilots broke the record in 2020 with a 177-day-long video.
In his conversation with Lowe, Williams, 51, discussed his upcoming film, Piece by Piece, directed by Morgan Neville, known for the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
The unique biographical film portrays Williams’ life story through 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.”
Williams revealed at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival that director Neville persuaded him to include his family in the film Piece by Piece. Initially hesitant, Williams ultimately trusted Neville’s direction.
The film, set for release on Friday, October 11, features Lego minifigure versions of Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, and more.
