Pharrell Williams’ life story is officially on the big screen. The famed producer’s Lego style biopic, Piece By Piece, can be viewed at your nearest theater and to promote it Pharrell is opening up about some major moments in his career.
During an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Pharrell made a shocking confession about his optimistic hit, “Happy.” The track, which featured in Despicable Me 2 and its soundtrack served as positive reinforcement for listeners. But according to Pharrell writing the smash “broke him.”
“I had written 9 songs that were rejected,” he said. “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. 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.”
However, Pharrell managed to find the silver lining, saying: “It’s so crazy for us to think like as individuals, everything comes from us. Your ideas, everything that you get, is coming from a library of existence. Nothing is new under the sun.”
In the past, Pharrell admitted that after a while he grew annoyed with the record just like the rest of us after it become unavoidable.
Watch Pharrell Williams and Morgan Neville’s full interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe above.