On the face of it, 2013 was one of the greatest years of Pharrell Williams’ career. He was involved in three huge hits - Happy, Blurred Lines (with Robin Thicke) and Get Lucky (with Daft Punk) - and appeared to be at the top of his game.
However, having “overcompensated with cockiness and arrogance” when he and Chad Hugo were hailed as superproducers when they broke through as The Neptunes, Williams says that this was when he had his big moment of creative self-doubt.
Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe as he promotes Piece by Piece, his new Lego biopic, Williams says that, despite being hugely successful, the fact that the three aforementioned songs were all written to a brief proved to be disconcerting.
“I was like, OK, well, these were all songs that were more commissions than they were, just like, I woke up one day and decided I'm gonna write about X, Y and Z,” says Pharrell.
“So, you know, when it's a commission, then God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, it's kind of like, well, did you do this? Was this your idea? You rose to the occasion three times, but you didn't wake up one morning and decide you was gonna make a song about an emotion.”
In fact, says Williams, prior to writing Happy for the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack, he’d hit something of a brick wall.
“This was nine songs that you were trying to like, you know, really complete this task for this film, and you kept hearing ‘No, no, no, no, no, no’. And then it was only [when] 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.”
That question, says Pharrell, 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.”
Listeners, though, didn’t spot that sarcasm - or if they did, they didn’t care - and embraced Happy as a full-throated ode to joyfulness.
“And that broke me,” admits Williams, “that all of what I thought it was supposed to be didn't do that. And I had to learn that the universe we're in is a part of everything that we do.”
Fortunately, Williams wasn’t completely broken, and suggests that, having had this moment of clarity, he made it work in his favour.
“It's so crazy for us to think, like as individuals, everything comes from us,” he now believes. “Our ideas, everything that you get, is coming from a library of existence. Nothing is new under the sun.
“In fact, the sun that you look up at every day is one of trillions upon trillions upon trillions of other stars. Nothing is new. Once you realise the insignificance of yourself, then you understand what your actual significance is.”
Wise, Rubin-esque words, but as previously reported, Williams’ life today isn’t completely without friction, as he’s currently locked in a legal battle with former friend and colleague Chad Hugo over ownership of the Neptunes name.
Even here, though, Williams is sanguine, reiterating that he wishes nothing but the best for his erstwhile production partner.
“I will always love Chad, and I will always be grateful for the time that we made music together,” he says. “Always. Nothing will change that, and I will always wish him the absolute best. Nothing will change that. There's nothing that he or anyone else could do to ever make me feel differently about what we did together and what I wish for him. Nothing.”
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