Singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams is the focus of a new documentary chronicling his journey to fame, but, presented in a unique twist—everyone in the film is depicted as animated Lego figures.
In the documentary “Piece by Piece,” released this month, Pharrell explained that using Lego figurines effectively represents his creative thoughts on screen. The “Get Lucky” hitmaker revealed that he was suffering from synaesthesia, a neurological condition that influences how he perceives and interprets sensory information.
That means the experience allows him to perceive music as a spectrum of colors, associating melodies, choruses, and hooks with various hues, as reported by Daily Mail.
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This neurological condition causes a blending of senses, enabling him to see music, taste words, and even smell shapes. In the documentary, he explained how as a child, he was “mesmerized” by music, often staring into speakers and witnessing vibrant colors.
“It’s not something that you see with your physical eyes, it’s something that you see in your mind’s eye,” he explained. “I would just start the record over, and start it over, and over doing whatever it took to continue to make it happen,” he added.
Pharrell said that synaesthesia not only enhances his perception of sound but also shapes his music-writing process. In a 2013 NPR interview, he explained that seeing colors helps him identify if a piece is in the correct key.
He said: “It’s the only way that I can identify what something sounds like. I know when something is in key because it either matches the same color or it doesn’t. Or it feels different, and it doesn’t feel right.”
Synaesthesia, a rare neurological condition affecting about 4% of people, is not classified as a disease or disorder, explains Professor Jamie Ward, a cognitive neuroscientist and synaesthesia expert at the University of Sussex.
“One sense can trigger another. Music might have colors, shapes and textures and they change dynamically over time. It’s not like just thinking of scenes like the countryside or houses, it’s more like seeing a dynamic abstract art image,” he told Daily Mail.
Professor Ward explained that while Pharrell sees music as colors, synaesthesia more commonly involves people tasting words or associating numbers with colors.
For many, like Pharrell, it acts as a creative boost, though some find it overwhelming. Despite this, synaesthesia isn’t typically treated, and many who have it enjoy experiencing the world through a unique sensory lens.
Professor Ward noted that synaesthesia is more common among creatives, such as musicians and artists, and often runs in families. Typically, it develops at birth or in early childhood, causing the brain to blend multiple senses.
“It changes the way the brain is wired,” he said. “There’s quite a lot of difference in the brain of someone with synaesthesia, but it’s not like having a stroke, where you can see a hole in the brain or anything like that.
“It’s just differences in the pattern of wiring in the brain. It that enables the information to flow around and join things together in unusual way.”
In synaesthesia, sensory experiences overlap—such as tasting a color—because multiple brain regions are activated simultaneously. For example, seeing a bright color not only stimulates the visual cortex but can also trigger the parietal lobe, responsible for taste.
While there are various forms of synaesthesia, people with the condition often experience these involuntary cross-sensory connections.
