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Music

The Internet Ruined Pharrell

This man used to be one of the coolest motherfuckers around—and then he put on an oversized hat.

Remember last year around this time? Everywhere you went, you could not escape that goddamn song. You know the one. It was everywhere. Bars. Cabs. BBQs. Rooftops. Cars. You’d frustratingly hum it as you walked down the street on a beautiful spring day. “We’ve come too faaaar,” you’d sing to yourself, “to give up who we aaaaare.” It’d be so stuck in your head you didn’t know how to get it unstuck. It was as if there was a tiny man inside your skull, handcuffed to your brain, constantly whispering “You’re up all night to get lucky / You’re up all night to get lucky / You’re up all night to get lucky / You’re up all night to get lucky” on repeat until it drove you so insane you never wanted to get laid again because you didn't want anyone to ever say the words "get lucky" to you ever again until the end of time.

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The catch of all of this is that, even though you hated that song more than every single pet peeve of yours combined, you also fucking loved it—like, unabashedly, shamelessly loved it. And seemingly every single person on the planet felt this way. I know I did. Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” was a pop culture monster of an event that lasted for months. Remember when they played that video at Coachella and it dominated the internet for weeks? Remember when every music writer talked how Random Access Memories was going to be the new White Album, even though we’d only heard a minute long snippet of one song from the album? Remember when, on one random Saturday evening, my friends and I put it on the same playlist like 60 times so we could hear it 60 times in a row (and that still wouldn’t have been enough)?

The craze for “Get Lucky” was incredible, really—kind of like if the hype machine for Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and Rebecca Black’s “Friday” had a baby, and that baby did a "Gangnam Style" remix with Psy. But the catch was that this song wasn't coming from some YouTube famous musician you then saw on Facebook 78 times in one hour. Instead, the makers were Daft Punk—the High Art Geniuses of our modern time.

Haha, this is now stuck in your head.

It’s weird. “Get Lucky” was awesome, but in hindsight it’s a pretty shitty song that kind of sounds like a jingle for hair gel. Seriously. It’s repetitive, basic, and was a good soundtrack for mainly two things: barbequing and college kids hooking up. And so if that’s the case, why did we all like it so much and why did it dominate pop culture discussion for so long? One of the main reasons is simple: the vocals of the track were provided by Pharrell, the coolest man in the world. That is, until his number one claim to fame turned into a large hat.

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Because until last year, we had forgotten about Pharrell. No, I know you, rap blogger who wrote a news story in 2011 about his crappy pink liquor Qream, did not forget about him. But the rest of us—the collective fans of pop culture—forgot that there was a beautiful and cool motherfucker named Pharrell, an extremely talented musician and producer with one of the most respectable and influential resumes of the past two decades of music. Before his re-emergence last year, he’d slipped out of the public eye, despite producing and producing for countless current artists (Frank Ocean, The Game, Mac Miller, Waka Flocka Flame, etc.). He even assisted Hans Zimmer in composing music for the 84th Academy Awards. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time—and then “Get Lucky” happened, and he exploded.

Once he got that sweet, sweet hook stuck in our heads, Twitter accounts everywhere seemed to collectively say, “Holy shit, remember how damn cool Pharrell is?” Everyone wanted a piece. Nitsuh Abebe wrote a lengthy profile about him for New York magazine, meticulously detailing his production skills and illustrating just how talented this dude really was. BuzzFeed wrote a listacle about how he never aged. Me personally? I remembered the time he stopped by the office when I was a Rolling Stone intern for a tasting of Qream, and I regretted not taking a selfie with him. He was swept up in a pop culture whirlwind. And then followed all of that by producing and singing on “Blurred Lines,” the other catchiest song of last year.

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2013 was the year of Pharrell. But then something happened.

The downfall of Pharrell’s perception began and ended with one thing: the hat. That stupid fucking hat. A hat so big it could double as a cruise ship. A hat so meme-worthy that it was a trending topic worldwide within minutes of its reveal at the Grammy’s. During our live blog of said event, each one of us groaned and made a comment about how in the coming weeks we’d have to see every person in the world think their Pharrell hat joke was the funniest thing in the world. And then that happened (and is still happening, by the way.) And don't you even dare turn on the NBA playoffs, or you'll be forced to see him dancing and acting like he's Michael Jordan in that stupid fucking promo for TNT.

Fucking stop it, man.

What’s frustrating is that it didn’t have to be this way. Pharrell’s motivation for wearing that hat was apparently to pay tribute to Malcolm McLaren and the Rock Steady Group, one of the most popular breakdancing groups in hip-hop from the early 80s. The hat comes from Vivienne Westwood’s vintage collection, and the decision to highlight the past in a subtle, fashionable way is a classic Pharrell move—which is effortlessly cool. But because of how the culture now consumes its content, the subtleties of Pharrell’s hat were immediately lost and it turned into a meme, even before Arby’s tweeted about it. But rather than giving us a substantial reason or justification for the hat, or straying from the spotlight like he would in the past, Pharrell essentially put up his hands and was like, “Oh, hey, you want me to be a meme? Sure. I’ll be a meme!” He embraced it and all of its stupidity, and any time you then saw this dude in the public eye—from talk shows to magazine photo spreads—he’d be wearing that thing. He even brought the hat up in a verse on Future’s “Move That Dope.” The. Hat. Was. Everywhere.

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So now, even though Pharrell currently still has the number one song in the world with “Happy” and is still no question one of the most talented producers in the game, when I think of Pharrell or hear his sweet voice, the truth is that I feel disgusting. I cannot stand him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to read about him. I do not care at all about what this guy with perfect skin is doing. The last thing I want to watch is a video of him crying on Oprah. I’m sick of him. I’m oversaturated on Pharrell. Simply the idea of listening to him makes my stomach churn. Internet culture has turned him into a walking Tumblr gif that’s been reblogged one too many times. And he's welcomed it! His new album GIRL is basically a mashup of songs that don't really sound like anything except advertisements for Ford Escapes. The internet ruined Pharrell and for some reason Pharrell has pandered to that perception. It really fucking sucks.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I’m getting sick of the meme-ification of what we love. Writing a thinkpiece about how Pharrell isn’t cool anymore because he wore a dumb hat to an awards show that ended up turning into a meme is inherently a petty and silly activity. I realize this. But it sucks that I feel compelled to write this petty thinkpiece, because the Pharrell downfall of “cool” is just another example of what’s continually happening to our culture. Our interests have been broken down into categories. Will this content go viral? There are 17 ways I just can’t right now about the new Beyoncé video. I’m just as guilty as everyone; I’m going to add a Valencia filter to my next Instagram photo and it’s going to look fucking dope. This is the truth of the age in which we live. Sometimes it’s good—like when it causes you to remember that someone like Pharrell does exist and that he’s made some of the best music you’ve ever heard—and sometimes it’s terrible—like when you get annoyed with Pharrell’s dumb hat and end up cracking jokes about how this is the same guy who thought a pink liquor named Qream would be a great business decision.

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Eric Sundermann knows he still will never be as cool as Pharrell because the internet ruined him a long time ago. He's Noisey's Managing Editor and is on Twitter@ericsundy

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