1.Marilyn Monroe
The album opener is where we meet the palpitating strings of the album trailer. Much of the album is underwritten, often quite subtly, by Hans Zimmer’s cinematic orchestrations, which drop here into a powerful, punching beat. Those masterfully simple Neptunes basslines are present, plus some offbeat disco guitars, as Pharrell dismisses Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra in favour of a girl who is “different.” It’s apparent from the get-go that, even by the man’s impossible standards, this is a polished record. “I went so hard that it came true,” he sings.
2. Brand New ft. Justin Timberlake
Next up is the first featured collaboration, a duet with Justin Timberlake. ‘Brand New’ is pure Off The Wall Michael Jackson at the peak of his disco funk powers, with its carnal exhalations, falsetto harmonies and plucked bass notes that dance all over the fretboard before being carried away on rising horns and strings. Pharrell says the song “felt so urgent,” and it does, embodying the same surging breathlessness that both the King of Pop and JT brought to their best work.
3. Hunter
Before playing this third track, Pharrell explains that “Hunter” is written from the perspective of an amorous woman ‘hunting’ him. When someone asks what this figure might look like, he says that we’ll have to wait for the release of the video to find out. The song moves into some intriguing post-disco, new wave synth funk, hopping on long-time N*E*R*D and The Neptunes collaborator Brent Paschke’s guitars.
4. Gush
By now, the room is struck by how powerfully each song so far has crashed in on its vigorous and insatiable beats, demanding attention and fanning the flames of our un-self conscious sedentary dancing. We’re treated to a little throwback line with the song’s hook of “Light that ass on fire,” but the solitary and sombre strings that rise trembling through the song are a far cry from Busta Rhymes’ metallic bounce. The song falls back into its disco beat to fade out over a buoyant guitar solo.
5. Happy
Pharrell almost doesn’t play the fifth track, his first platinum-selling single as a solo artist and the song that may well win him an Oscar next month. He’s ready to skip past it, knowing that we’ve all heard it countless times, but he bows to the will of the eager mob and presses play- a good thing too, as we realise how quite unlike the rest of the album it sounds, with its sunshiny choral harmonies and mischievously uptempo beat. What’s most interesting now is the way he talks about it: he says its origins lie in darker places, and that when working on the Despicable Me 2 score he scrapped nine drafts before settling on ‘Happy.’ He wanted to temper his usual fare of “sweat and booty shaking” with a song that would reinforce joy and felicity “relentlessly.” Let’s hope the Academy Award judges are susceptible.
6. Come Get It
The sixth track opens with clamorous marching percussion and a purring bassline, and yet more saucy breathy backing. The jangling guitars here lend it a more prominent dance-rock vibe. Ever the hardest working man in the production business, Pharrell lent his golden touch to four songs on Bangerz, and here Miley Cyrus returns the favour with some ably lustful backing vocals.
7. Gust of Wind
“Gust of Wind” is Pharrell’s “personal favourite” song on G I R L, and he likes it so much that he plays it twice, excitedly jumping back to the start before the first play-through has even finished. He tells us that this one features “the robots,” and that the punchy offbeat guitar comes from a young Canadian prodigy called Francesco Yates. It begins with zigzagging strings, and then that unmistakeable vocoder voice wraps itself around the climbing bassline and pumps mightily, nigh-on unintelligibly through the chorus. “Mothership Other cannot go away” sings Skateboard P, repping his new iamOther creative collective. By this point, it becomes apparent that the narrative personae that Pharrell embodies on these songs are somehow more Romantic than the libidinous paramours of previous outings, and they are all the sexier and more endearing for it.
8. Lost Queen
“Lost Queen” rolls along on the warm hum of an a cappella choir, as Pharrell growls like a motor engine over tough and sharp percussion in what might almost be a calypso-inspired song. He takes a break to explain that both this track and Come Get It were mixed by engineer and four-time Grammy winner Jimmy Douglass, while the rest, unsurprisingly, benefitted from the touch of the multi platinum-selling former MJ and Quincy Jones collaborator Mick Gauzaski.
9. FREQ
Next up is an interlude track, and the duration of the waves-breaking-on-the-seashore intro evidently requires some editing. As we sit drifting in unexpectedly lengthy ocean sounds, Pharrell delivers an impromptu recitation of Castaway, pining for his best friend Wilson. He makes a point of giving us the main lyric beforehand: “You gotta go inward to experience the outer space that was built for you.” Once we’re done with the waves we discover some enticing looped sitars and more introspective proverbs: “I’d rather be a freak if individuality makes life better.” It’s a song, he says, that he wants to have a “meditative vibe.”
10. You Know Who You Are ft. Alicia Keys
This is what he refers to as his “soldiers’ hymn” for those closest to him, a warm and sincere duet with Alicia Keys, still riding that softly diffusive percussion. When asked about the collaboration, Pharrell says that Keys is “a fighter” and that she embodies the image of the song that he wanted to project.
11. It Girl
The final song of G I R L is an ambitious one: Pharrell tells the room that he wants it to make listeners feel the same way he did when he first encountered A Tribe Called Quest, to be a kind of a baton-passing track that will inspire others in the same way that Q-Tip inspired him. It’s a song written with live shows in mind, and it counts on a funky breakdown decorated with dreamy, illuminative guitars, warping strings and chiming percussion to round off the record and play out on. Pharrell steps back and allows the synergic musicians of the record to close, striking up their exhilarating and airtight funk with pleasure, one last time, gradually fading out into a satisfied silence. The applause in the room is sustained, the appreciation enthusiastic; his thanks, genuine. Long after the majority of the attendees have left, the songs are played again to an empty room; the stragglers mingling outside the door, picking at the last of the vol-au-vent, can’t resist getting down one more time.
