When Pharrell Cried

I hate Happy. I hate it with an intensity that feels unbalanced for a pop song. If I have to hear it one more time, I might start reenacting Game of Thrones violence in earnest. But apparently everyone else on earth made peace with it in a way I never will, and they started uploading videos of themselves being happy because of Pharrell’s song. That’s the part I’m not equipped to understand.

What gets me is that Pharrell watched these videos on Oprah and cried. Not the manufactured happy tears of a performer. Actual crying. The guy who made the most relentlessly cheerful song in existence, confronted with proof that it mattered to people, and he just broke.

That’s the version of him worth paying attention to. Not the hit maker, not the producer, but someone realizing his work moved people when he wasn’t busy trying to move them. The vulnerability is the only real thing there.