Pharrell Says Writing His Hit Song ‘Happy’ Wasn’t A Happy Time At All, In Fact It ‘Broke Him’

Pharrell‘s entire outlook on life changed when he made his smash single “Happy” from a sarcastic place out of frustration from multiple failed attempts at trying to make an actually happy song.

In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1 ahead of the release of his biographical film Piece by Piece, the Neptunes co-founder discussed his approach to one of his biggest hits, “Happy.”

“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 recalls 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 recalled completing the soundtrack for the children’s film 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,” 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 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.

via: People

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