Hats off to Pharrell – he’s had quite a year
Pharell Williams has finally lost his top spot on the Soundnet charts, where he has remained for an amazing 16 weeks with his track ‘Happy’. During the past four months, he has headed off challenges for the top of the Soundnet chart from other artists who reached number one in the Official Chart Company listings, including Clean Bandit, Route 94, Sam Smith and Avicii.
The artist who finally toppled Williams is Canadian singer songwriter Kiesza with a track called Hideaway, which has tickled the fancy of the jukebox listening public. The uptempo track was amazingly written by Kiesza and her collaborator Rami Samir Afuni in just an hour and mixed and mastered half an hour afterward and it has been the third fastest selling number one record in the UK this year.
But nothing can compare to the success that Pharrell Williams has enjoyed in the last 12 months. Check out this for a diary: In March last year, Williams appeared alongside T.I. on Robin Thicke’s controversial but undeniably huge single ‘Blurred Lines’ which reached number one in no fewer than 14 different countries.
Just a month later, the disco track Get Lucky was released from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. Williams featured on the track and on another album track ‘Lose Yourself To Dance.’
At about the same time he also featured on a track from Azealia Banks’ debut studio album Broke with Expensive Taste. By June, the film Despicable Me 2 was released and featured three original new tracks from Pharrell Williams, including the irrepressible track ‘Happy’.
By July 2013 there had only been 137 singles in UK chart history to have sold 1 million copies in the UK; that month Pharrell scored two million-sellers with “Get Lucky” and “Blurred Lines”. By September 2013, ‘Get Lucky’ had sold 7m copies worldwide. It was no surprise therefore that in December 2013 t Williams had been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, including Producer of the Year In the same month, a press release from Columbia Records announced that Pharrell had signed a contract with the label and would be releasing an album in 2014, featuring the single “Happy” from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack. For “Happy” Pharrell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Happy but narrowly lost out to ‘Let it go’ from the film Frozen.
By March 2014 Williams released his album Girl to wide acclaim and later that month he announced that he would be a new coach on the US version of The Voice.
Could he be the busiest man in the music business? All hail to Pharrell Williams, we figure it won’t be long before he is at the top of the Soundnet charts again.
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