Happy (Pharrell Williams song)

Background

Williams provided vocals for French duo Daft Punk's 2013 album Random Access Memories, on the songs "Lose Yourself to Dance" and "Get Lucky". After returning from the recording sessions in Paris, he attended a meeting with record label managers who said that the results were "spectacular" and that "Get Lucky" would be Daft Punk's next single. They also made Williams an offer to record his own album, to which he agreed quickly, "overwhelmed that someone wanted to know what's in my heart."

On December 17, 2013, it was announced that Williams had signed to Columbia Records and would release his second studio album in 2014. In a December 2013 press release, Rob Stringer, Chairman of Columbia Records, said "When we excitedly partnered with Pharrell in January of this year, we felt it was his time again. Since then, 'Blurred Lines' and 'Get Lucky' have defined pop music in 2013, and now we are preparing to launch Pharrell as a global solo superstar in 2014. 'Happy' is just the beginning."

Williams originally wrote the song for CeeLo Green and felt Green's recording of the song was better, but Elektra Records, Green's record label, decided against it since he was on the verge of releasing his Christmas album, Cee Lo's Magic Moment.

Composition

"Happy" was written and produced by Williams, with backing vocals by Rhea Dummett, Trevon Henderson, Ashley L. Lee, Shamika Hightower, Jasmine Murray and Terrence Rolle. The track was digitally edited and arranged by Andrew Coleman and Mike Larson, who also recorded it with assistance from Matthew Desrameaux at Circle House Studios in Miami, Florida. The song was later mixed by Leslie Brathwaite at Music Box Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Happy" plays for 3 minutes and 53 seconds in common time and at a tempo of 156 beats per minute. The song is in the key of F major and it features a blue note. Williams sings the upper notes in falsetto; his vocal range spans from F₄ to C₆. His singing on the track has been compared to that of Curtis Mayfield.

"Happy" is a mid-tempo soul and neo soul song. According to music journalist Paul Tingen, "Happy" is "a mid-tempo ... song in a faux-Motown style, with an arrangement that is, by modern standards, very sparse: programmed drums, one bass and one keyboard part, and handclaps both programmed and played, all topped off by Williams's lead vocals and a whole posse of backing vocals". Jody Rosen viewed the song as a "standout" with a "sprightly neosoul funk groove".

Critical reception

"Happy" was released to generally positive reviews from music critics. Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone gave it 3.5 stars and deemed it "an instant contender for 2013's Song of the Summer". In a 4/5 review, Renowned for Sound's Huw Woodward said, "Happy is a rather… well… happy affair with a cheerful beat and exuberant vocal that would indicate that the former N.E.R.D singer is finding a lot of lighthearted fun to be had in both music and life. 'Because I'm happy, clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth' sings Williams as the jaunty rhythm gets your head nodding." Holly Williams of Contactmusic.com gave it four stars, praising it for being "unbelievably catchy" and "the kind of song that makes you want to dance and sing along".

Accolades

The song was nominated for Best Original Song at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2, 2014, but lost to "Let It Go" from Frozen. When GQ magazine asked Williams "how badly" he wanted the Oscar, he responded: "When they read the results, my face was...frozen. But then I thought about it, and I just decided just to... let it go."

"I like that song 'Happy'…" remarked Phil Collins. "I think it's a great groove and he's a very smart guy."

In January 2015, "Happy" was ranked at No. 13 on The Village Voice's annual year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll.

Netherlands

In October 2013, a month prior to its release, "Happy" catapulted to No. 1 on the Dutch Top 40 chart in the Netherlands, partially as a result of radio station 3FM airplay and subsequent online downloads, as well as featuring in a Transavia commercial. It was released worldwide on November 21, 2013. As of April 10, 2014, after 35 weeks in charts and still in the top 15, "Happy" is the most successful song in the Dutch Top 40 of all time.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, "Happy" debuted at No. 71 on the UK Singles Chart on December 1, 2013. It then spent four weeks climbing before finally reaching No. 1 on December 29. It became Williams' third No. 1 song in Britain, counting "Get Lucky" and "Blurred Lines", where he appeared as a featured artist. It has since spent four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1, reaching the peak on three separate occasions. In doing so, Williams became only the third artist ever to achieve this, and the first since Guy Mitchell in 1957 with "Singing the Blues". Following the single's third week at No. 1, it spent five weeks in the top three before returning to the summit, boosted by his performance at the 2014 Brit Awards. In the same week that "Happy" returned to No. 1 for the third time, it sold its millionth copy in the UK, Williams' third in under a year, having previously done so with Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" in June 2013, and Thicke's "Blurred Lines" in July 2013. This made Williams only the second artist in UK chart history (the first being The Beatles) to have three singles sell 1 million copies in under a year, as well as only the third artist ever to have three million-sellers, along with The Beatles (who have six) and Rihanna (who has four).

"Happy" was the best-selling single of UK in 2014 with 1.5 million copies sold for the year, and became the most downloaded song of all time in the UK by September 2014, with over 1.62 million sold. It had also been streamed over 25 million times and was the first song released in the 2010s to go 3× Platinum. With the inclusion of streaming, "Happy" has achieved combined sales of over 2 million. Additionally, "Happy" and Idina Menzel's "Let It Go" became the first singles ever to spend an entire calendar year on the official UK top 75 chart. On June 12, it was announced that "Happy" had overtaken "Evergreen" by Will Young as the UK's best-selling single of the 21st century with sales of 1.81 million. "Happy" spent 92 weeks in the UK top 100. On April 22, 2016, "Happy" went 4× Platinum.

New Zealand

On the New Zealand Singles Chart, "Happy" debuted at No. 11 on December 23, 2013. The next week it moved to No. 2. Then on January 6, 2014, "Happy" began a 12-week consecutive reign in the No. 1 position, right up until March 24, 2014. It then dropped to No. 2 for one week, then spent a further three weeks at No. 1, bringing the total number of weeks at No. 1 to fifteen, breaking the 36-year-long record for most weeks spent at No. 1, previously held by Boney M.'s "Rivers of Babylon". As of February 22, 2015, "Happy" had spent 62 straight weeks in the New Zealand Top 40 since its debut, before finally dropping out of the chart the following week. The song has been certified 6× Platinum in New Zealand, and has become the country's No. 1 best-selling single of all time.

United States

"Happy" reached the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending March 8, 2014, giving Williams his fourth No. 1 single on the chart, but his first as lead artist. It took twelve years and a week (as the issue date is March 8, 2014) to achieve his first Hot 100 No. 1 hit as a lead artist. The song remained at No. 1 the following week, and also topped the Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song also holds the record for the second-highest audience peak for a week on the Hot 100 Airplay, with 225.9 million impressions while Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines", a song in which Pharrell was featured as well as produced and co-wrote, holds the all-time record. The song remained at the No. 1 position longer than any other song in the calendar year. The single passed its 4 million sales mark in April 2014, the first song of 2014 to do so.

On the week of May 17, 2014, John Legend's "All of Me" pushed "Happy" down to the No. 2 spot after having remained at number one for 10 consecutive weeks. "Happy" became the 28th song in the history of the chart to reach this milestone. It spent a total of 22 weeks in the top 10, entering on the week-ending February 15, 2014 and departing on July 19, 2014. The song sold 5,633,000 copies in the US in the first six months of 2014, the most ever of any song in the first six months of any calendar year. It was also the best-selling song of 2014 in the US with 6.45 million copies sold for the year, and has sold over 6.9 million total copies in the US as of April 2015.

Other charts

The song also topped the charts of 22 other countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Spain. It has spent twelve weeks (including seven consecutive) at No. 1 in Ireland, making it the third song in less than a year to spend more than seven weeks at No. 1, after Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Avicii's "Wake Me Up!". In France, "Happy" spent 22 weeks at No. 1, the longest reign at the top of the Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique, beating Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5", which spent 20 weeks at No. 1 in 1999.

Music video

To coincide with the single release, the website 24hoursofhappy.com was launched, featuring a visual presentation of "Happy", which was advertised as being "the world's first 24-hour music video." The video was shot by steadicam operator Jon Beattie, its creative director was Yoann Lemoine and its director the French directing team We Are from LA. It consists of the four-minute song repeated multiple times, with various people dancing around Los Angeles and miming along. The website allows users to navigate to various points in the 24-hour timeframe, including all 360 four-minute segments.

Williams himself appears 24 times in the day-long video, once at the start of each hour. There are a number of celebrity cameos in the video, including Whit Hertford, Kelly Osbourne, Magic Johnson, Urijah Faber, Sérgio Mendes, Jimmy Kimmel, Odd Future, Steve Carell (who plays Gru in Despicable Me 2), Jamie Foxx, Ana Ortiz, Miranda Cosgrove (who plays Margo in Despicable Me 2), Gavin DeGraw and JoJo. The minions from Despicable Me 2 make several appearances throughout the film, including one scene at 3:00 am, in which Pharrell Williams and the minions dance in a movie theatre that is playing the scene from Despicable Me 2 in which "Happy" appears. A lone, one-eyed minion also appears dancing to song in its entirety at 4:40 pm.

An official four-minute edit of the video was also released onto YouTube on November 21, 2013, and as of March 2017 has had over 930 million views. It was nominated for Best Male Video and Video of the Year at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. The 24-hour music video for "Happy" was also projected at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema in April 2014.

"Happy" tribute videos

The original video spawned many cover videos on YouTube in which people from different cities throughout the world dance to the song. Those videos are usually called "Pharrell Williams – Happy – We Are from [name of the city]". As of May 2014, more than 1,500 videos have been created. Inspired by this global phenomenon, a French couple launched a website wearehappyfrom.com to showcase the remakes.

In April 2014, the Embassy of the United States, Yerevan, Armenia released a video titled "Happy Yerevan", directed by Artyom Abovyan featuring US ambassador John A. Heffern and several Armenian celebrities, such as singers André, Emmy and Aram Mp3. The same month artsmedia Albania produced a music video for the track featuring inhabitants of Tirana. The video soon became viral in Albania and caused controversy over the usage of images of Albanian First Secretary Enver Hoxha.

In May 2014, a group of Iranian fans who created a tribute to "Happy" were arrested. According to a police chief, the song represented vulgarity and also hurt public chastity. Williams responded to the arrest in a tweet stating "It's beyond sad these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness." Soon after Iran's President Hassan Rouhani criticized the arrest when he tweeted "#Happiness is our people's right. We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy." The dancers, along with the director, were later released. It was reported on September 19, 2014 that seven of the individuals in the Iranian video had been handed suspended punishments of 91 lashes each along with jail sentences by Iranian courts. The result of the suspended sentence is that if another crime is committed in the next three years, then the punishments will be carried out.

In the media

In December 2013, Conor Maynard released a cover of "Happy". A few days later Angel also made a cover of the song.

In February 2014, the song was licensed by Fiat for use in the spot worldwide. The song is used in the commercial titled "Mirage" playing in the background which features Sean "Diddy" Combs. The song appeared in a Beats by Dr. Dre commercial in 2014.

In March 2014, Daniel Evans, a finalist on the fifth series of The X Factor, made an a cappella version with a little help from his six-year-old daughter. Pentatonix released a cover in the same month. The song was covered in the 100th episode of Glee, entitled "100", as performed by Holly Holliday (Gwyneth Paltrow). In the battle round of season six of NBC's The Voice, Josh Kaufman and Austin Ellis sang the song for Team Adam Levine. The song also appeared in one of the promos for the show's seventh season with Williams as the coach.

In April 2014, John Butler Trio made a funky acoustic rendition of the song on Triple J radio. Naturally 7 and Van Halen's singer David Lee Roth sang the song backstage. In the same month, late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon impersonating Vladimir Putin and Sarah Palin performed an instrumental rendition on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

In 2014, "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song as "Tacky" for his album Mandatory Fun. The music video, featuring Aisha Tyler, Margaret Cho, Eric Stonestreet, Kristen Schaal, Jack Black, and Yankovic dressed in tacky clothes and dancing purposely poorly while lip-synching to the song, was released online on July 14, 2014.

On September 11, 2014, Maroon 5 covered the song on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge. On September 14, Kira Kazantsev won Miss America 2015 after performing "Happy" with cup percussion, in a manner that was similar to Anna Kendrick's character in the movie Pitch Perfect.

Credits and personnel

Recording

Personnel

Certifications

Since May 2013, RIAA certifications for digital singles include on-demand audio and/or video song streams in addition to downloads.