You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Pharrell Williams is, well, let me just say, he's a big reason why Song Exploder exists. He's a singer, songwriter, and producer. And in the 90s, when I first heard the work that he was doing with the Neptune's, which was his production duo with Chad Hugo, it blew my mind. It made me want to know where those sounds came from and where those ideas came from. Pharrell has won 13 Grammys. He's been nominated for two Oscars.
He's produced iconic songs for Kendrick Lamar, Brittany Spears, Clips, Gwen Stefani, and so many others. And on his own, he's made songs like Happy, the giant hit for Despicable Me that was the best-selling song of 2014. And now there's a movie about his life called Piece by Piece, but it's an animated Lego film. For this episode, I talked to Pharrell about the title song from Piece by Piece.
So coming up, you'll hear how Pharrell built that song, including a first draft that never saw the light of day. You'll hear how he built Piece by Piece by programming it on his own with MIDI instruments, and then adding and replacing those parts with other musicians, including the high school marching band that he used to play in. I can't start getting high, high, high. I'm Threways. I never wanted to do a documentary on my life or my musical career. I just always straight away from it.
I just don't like listening to myself talk. I'm an artist, but I'm more so a producer, and I'm much better at helping other people hone their craft than I am the person who enjoys seeing myself on the camera or listening to myself on a recording. For example, like I did a song called Beautiful With Snoop 20-something Years ago. And I'm singing them falsetto on the chorus. Like a lot of people could like it, but when I was listening to it, I would just hear Mickey Mouse.
Because I sang like this in high kids. I was a very harsh critic on my work. So I didn't want to do a documentary and listen to myself for an hour and change. But it was actually only until my agent was just like being so forceful. He's like, you gotta make one. And finally, he said the magic words, which were, you can do it whatever way you want. And once I heard that, I was like, okay, if it's truly whatever way I want, I wanted it to be animated and through the guise of Lego.
Did you play with Legos when you were a kid? Yes, that's where this all comes from. My parents would get me those things for Christmas and psych. It's a big deal. And the filter of Lego gave me the space and enough degrees of dissociation where I can like look at it objectively. Peace by peace started out a completely different song. See the prayer and eat the predator alive. It's a sweet song. It's like, yay, we, but that's all it is. It's sweet.
But I was like, man, this doesn't disrupt the dance floor. It wasn't sticky and it didn't feel urgent. And I knew that like I wanted something urgent for this film. I wanted the verses to just be like aggressive, like a 1977 trans-am. You know, when you hit the gas, it's like, oh, like it needs to do that. I was like, the melody is cool, but just saying it. So I started from the basic building blocks of what the drums were. That boom, boom, boom. That part right there.
That ended up taking on a new life and a new thing is peace by peace. Peace by peace. I program all of my instruments in logic. That's a clavicle, but like a fusion of a little wawa type guitar vibe. And the baseline needed to feel like you move in this movie called Drive, or Ryan Gosling. Yeah. You know that jacket that he wore? The scorpion jacket. Yes, scorpion jacket. I knew it needed to feel like I was putting on that jacket.
I don't have a word for it. I just know the feeling. The feeling is like that jacket. When you hear that, it doesn't sound like the daytime. It sounds like the night. Very dark, very nocturnal. It feels like a club scene. It sounds like he's driving. I knew that I wanted to sing the first verse in my lower tone. I just had a long time ago. I would write my own chronicle. Sit around that in me. Nor is following the lead. And I layered it like eight times on top of myself.
Because I wanted it to be clear and I wanted it to feel like the urgency of an army. Let me build what I see. You know it starts with a piece. Give it time. Let it breathe. Instead of suffocating crazy dreams. Hey! If I'm going to talk about my life, then I need to have a track that encapsulates everything that I am. You know, I have songs that are very dark and feel very nocturnal, which are the verses of this one.
And I have songs that are very bright and feel like the daytime. And that's what the chorus does. Oh, it feels so good inside. I told you, I told you. The only way it happened was mine. So that just sounds like joy to me. And with a vase, all of that feels very bright and very like sunshiney. And I wanted people to feel that, that freedom and release of tension. I play and program all of my instruments. And then I get live musicians to replay them. So I got Brent Paschie to replay my guitar.
And then I sent him a voice note to be even more detailed, even more forensic about what I wanted to guitar riff to sound like. And the second verse, I take it back and I give you a little context. I get vulnerable and I sing in a higher octave. I got butterflies. Don't look surprised, girl. Don't look surprised, girl. With the dream this size. That's the princes and marching Cavaliers, my high school band. That marching band was such a strong part of my story.
I started right after seventh grade. So I was about 12, 13. I've always played percussion and I played a bass drum. And the bass drum sounds basic, but marching bands have a bass line that has four to five different bass drummers playing in sync. I was a part of that line. And I think it's given me the breadth that is given me musically because we were learning overtures and rap cities and conchertos and all these types of things that like the average musician probably didn't have to go through.
So it's like a flex. It's like, you're my high school marching band on this song with me because I never dreamt when I was standing in that drum line that I'd be giving an opportunity to do anything like this. So let's do it. And when it pays off, pays off, it feels so good inside screaming, I told you, I told you, I told you, I was kind of like writing to the fact that it was kind of like a breath of fresh air right at that moment in a release and an exhale, you know.
And being metaphorical for like when you get to that place in your life too, things my face, things my peace, things my peace, things my peace, things my peace. You know, the anatomy of a song is always interesting when you see what the urgent and active ingredients are. It's always interesting to see those things, isolate them, put them together, see how they work.
And the mechanics is like a really interesting thing. And that's zoomed in, right. But when you zoom all the way out and go to the macro of it all, I am not thinking as much as I am feeling the construction of a song is not a thought thing. Like sculpture, you're just chiseling away or you're adding clay, you know, it's like that. Music is the skeleton key that's open every door for me. I'm 51. I love making music.
It's not about chart position. It's not about like the gamification that the industry places on you that you need to do this and you got to do that. I make music because I love it and it's so fun. And if it ends up being a big record, cool. I went through that and you know my 20s like, oh, you know, it's got to be this chart topping. It's a lot of the law. I mean, cool. That's what you want to do. But I make music because it's fun for me. And there's no pressure and having fun.
Coming up, you'll hear how all of this came together in the final song. This episode is brought to you by Nightside, the ultimate bedside lamp for people who want to read and bed without waking their sleeping partner. I love this lamp. I have two of them. The nightside lamp gives off a soothing ambient glow. But then you can press this button at the top and a little spotlight extends that you can use to focus on whatever you need to see.
I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. So I use the little spotlight so I can read or work on a crossword puzzle before I go to sleep myself. Also, the lamp is just a beautiful object. It won this year's prestigious IF Design Award. So go take a look at it and order one for yourself at nightside.com. Song Exploder listeners will get 15% off their first order by using the code song exploder at checkout. Again, that's nightside.com and the code is song exploder.
And now here's piece by piece by Ferrell Williams in its entirety. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early.
I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. This episode was produced by Craig Ili, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. I'm a night owl, but my wife goes to bed early. Radio til the end. Hey, this is Rishi. If you didn't know, I co-hosted a podcast called The West Wing Weekly from 2016 to 2020, where I talked about every episode of the TV show The West Wing with my friend Josh Molina, who starred on the show.
We talked about the writing and the directing and the performances, as well as the political issues that would come up in the plots of the episodes. It was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of jokes, and it was also a chance for us to do a close reading of some great TV. And so now Josh and I have brought the show back for a special mini-series around this election season. We're calling it The West Wing Weekly political film fest.
We're watching and discussing some of the most interesting and influential political films. We're looking at classics like Dr. Strange Love and Mr. Smith goes to Washington, as well as some of our favorite modern political films, like In the Loop for The Creators of Veep and the Oscar-winning movie Judas in the Black Messiah. Watching these movies has been a way to get some perspective, and frankly some relief from the real world political theater of this current moment.
So if you need a dose of political fiction, watch and listen with us at The West Wing Weekly. Just search for The West Wing Weekly on your favorite podcast app.