“Happy” by Pharrell Williams

song info

    “Happy” by Pharrell Williams (official video) is a neo soul song from the soundtrack of the movie Despicable Me 2.

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/ha/happypharrell.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Happy” is a song performed by American singer and producer Pharrell Williams, from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack album. It also serves as the lead single from Williams’ second studio album, G I R L (2014). The song was written and produced by Williams. It was released on November 21, 2013 alongside a long-form music video presented via the website 24hoursofhappy.com. The song was reissued on December 16, 2013 by Back Lot Music, under exclusive license to Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment.
    “Happy” has been highly successful, topping the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and charts in 15 other countries. It has sold one million copies in the United Kingdom, and has reached the summit on three separate occasions, both records in their own right.

Production
    “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.

Composition
    “Happy” plays for 3 minutes and 53 seconds in common time and at a tempo of 160 beats per minute. It is in the key of F minor, with Williams’ vocal range spanning from an F₄—C₆. “Happy” is a neo soul and funk song that Williams sings in falsetto. His vocals on the track have been compared to Curtis Mayfield.

Music video
    To coincide with the single release, the website 24hoursofhappy.com was launched featuring a visual presentation of “Happy” advertised as being “the world’s first 24 hour music video”. The video consists of the four-minute song repeated with various people dancing around Los Angeles and miming along. Williams himself appears 24 times on the hour, and there are a number of celebrity cameos including Odd Future (1:48pm), Steve Carell (5:08pm), Jamie Foxx (5:28pm), Ana Ortiz (5:32pm), Miranda Cosgrove (5:40pm), Tyler, The Creator, JoJo (6:16pm), Whit Hertford (1:04am), Kelly Osbourne (1:28am), Magic Johnson (5:36am), Urijah Faber (8:36am), Sérgio Mendes (10:32am) and Jimmy Kimmel (11:48am). The minions from Despicable Me 2 make several appearances throughout the film, including one scene at 3:00am, in which Pharrell 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 4:40pm. The site allows users to navigate to various points in the 24-hour timeframe, including all 360 four-minute segments and each hourly segment with Pharrell. An official four-minute edit of the video was also released on YouTube.
    The original video spawned many cover videos on YouTube in which people from different cities throughout the world dance along the song. Those videos are usually called “Pharrell Williams – Happy – We Are from [name of the city]”.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

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