Pharrell Williams has been in the music business since the early 1990s, but would score the biggest hit of his career in 2013 with “Happy.” The peppy tune was such an astronomical international achievement on Top 40 radio that you would not be chastised for forgetting the song originates from a movie called Despicable Me 2.
Apparentl, no one is more surprised by the reception of the song, which earned the second Despicable Me movie an Academy Award nomination, than its own writer and performer. That being said, Williams does not just consider “Happy” to be a profound moment of professional success, but a pivotal moment of self-discovery, too. How so?
Pharrell Williams Wrote Nine Rejected Songs For Despicable Me 2
While appearing on Apple Music’s The Zane Lowe Show, promoting his critically well-received, LEGO-style biopic, Piece by Piece, in October 2024, Pharrell Williams recalled being asked to write songs for Despicable Me 2 (available with a Peacock subscription), having previously contributed to the soundtrack for the first installment. This time, he faced what proved to be an unexpected challenge of penning a track for a montage that sees reformed supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) on top of the world the day after spending a wonderful evening with Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig).
By Williams’ count, he presented nine different ideas, one after another, for a song to accompany the scene. They were all rejected each time. The tenth time turned out to be the charm, but the way he finally came up with the winning tune went against his typical methodology.
“Happy” Was Pharrell Williams’ Sarcastic Answer To A Rhetorical Question
Pharrell Williams, flashing his gold Invisalign, admitted to Zane Lowe that what ultimately led him to write “Happy” was when, after his previous ideas were shunned, he hit a creative wall and was “out of ideas.” Desperate for inspiration, he decided to ask himself a rhetorical question. He explained what that question was, and how the answer proved to be lightning in a bottle:
‘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.
So it appears that Williams had a more earnest approach to the nine other songs he was hoping would make it into the Despicable Me 2 montage. However, when he stopped taking the process so seriously, that’s when he came up with a tune that was money to his employers’ ears and, apparently, audiences across the world. You would think an outcome like that would take a toll on an artist. Based on Williams’ reaction to the experience, you would be right, but not in the way you might assume.
“Happy’s” Success Was An Eye-Opening Moment For Williams
Pharrell Williams’ story about how “Happy” came to be was an answer to Zane Lowe’s question about a profound, life-changing moment in his life. He started by discussing how 2013 was one of the biggest years of his career, with the additional success of “Get Lucky” (a collaboration with Daft Punk, who also made memorable contributions to movie and TV soundtracks), and “Blurred Lines,” with Robin Thicke and T.I.
Both of those hits were also commissions like “Happy,” which is why the positive response to the “sarcastic” Despicable Me 2 track is what finally “broke” him, and here’s why:
[It] broke me that all of what I thought [the song] was supposed to be didn’t do that, and I had to learn that the universe… is part of everything we do. It’s so crazy for us to think that, 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 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 realize the insignificance of yourself, then you understand what your actual significance is.
Who knew that a novelty song from a fun kids movie would end up having such a profound impact on a person’s philosophical perspective?
I must admit that I find Pharrell Williams’ reaction to the “journey,” if you will, that led to him writing his biggest hit quite inspiring. An esteemed artist such as himself could have taken offense to the success of “Happy,” feeling that his ambitions were not being taken seriously. Yet he chose to check his ego at the door and accept the career milestone as destiny. What could bring you down from that sort of happiness?