Pharrell - G I R L

let's talk about this album, which sounds hilarious but kinda dope

"duck dynasty is cool and all / but they've got nothing on the female's call"

man the lyrics on this album are so dopey, "lost queen" good lord

really good grooves all over the place though

^^ Pharrell's entire career in a nutshell

apparently there's a hidden track featuring jojo on this!!!! god will i have to listen to the stupid thing now

is it available ?
Pharrell had an incredible year in 2013 and I loved or enjoyed a lot "get lucky" and "good girl" but "happy" gets on my nerves so I don't know what to expect from this...

streaming thru itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/station/listen-in-itunes/idra.827875018

lol i'm in my first listen and just heard the duck dynasty line...

the stream isn't loading for me?

i had to update itunes before it worked unfortunately

when do we get a skateboard p record tho

So this is like very underwhelming...yes?...

Need to sit with it more, but on first listen it's alright. There's some good stuff here, some goofy stuff, and some of that is overlapping, but the rest is mostly just ehhhhh to me right now.

only just finished the first listen but not really feeling this. the production is uniformly pleasant and occasionally things are appealingly goofy but with a few exceptions i would say the songs are not quite there. like "happy" is easily a highlight and i'm not even super enthusiastic about that.

didn't even notice jojo on that one track but it was a pretty boring one anyways.

gust of wind

What does Chad Hugo do exactly and is he on this?...

Was there ever a thread where "Happy" and its "24-Hour Video" were discussed?

http://24hoursofhappy.com/

The Alicia Keys, Daft punk, and JT featuring songs seemed like early standouts to me when I listened to this at like 2 in the morning.

xp Videos featuring unprofessionals dancing with gleeful abandon couldn't be more tuned to my tastes, but I've only watched like 13 or 14 hours of that.

Pharrell Sings!

"Happy" was discussed here

It's totally great. It's the most human pop song/video I've seen in a long time.

I enjoy the video although I've grown a bit tired of the song (but I don't hate Pharrell's influenced by but not as great as Curtis Mayfield vocalizing the way some do here)

He specified that the capitalization and double-spacing of the album title is deliberately designed, "because when you look at it, it looks a little weird [...] because society is a little unbalanced."

this has to be one of the most stupid sentences in a press release, like, ever

I don't mind Pharell's voice here, although I think it's just a hair too autotuned

it's like all-caps isn't enough now, it's got to be

Le Youth - C O O L
Pharrell - G I R L

kind of wish they'd be honest and say it's an anti-piracy measure

ditto the glut of self-titled albums appearing around now

also three songs into this and it's fucking boring. he's in the same artistic rut that he's been in for most of the past decade, it's just that popular trends have swung back to his sound, and his personality, pushing retro nostalgia buttons. he's sort of this year's cee-lo.

I don't think it's an anti-piracy measure. How many people would that stop from just putting in the year of release or other search terms to find it 5 seconds later.

also the fact that 99% of people zipping up the album are just going to write "GIRL" anyway

"he's sort of this year's cee-lo"

lol this is so true, he's basically a radio 2 musician now but doesn't know it yet

it is pretty odd to hear sounds that were amazing & innovative returning basically unchanged and coding as conservative & retro but there it is

oh my god "lost queen" -_-

it is pretty odd to hear sounds that were amazing & innovative returning basically unchanged and coding as conservative & retro but there it is

― lex pretend, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 11:17 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

honestly though this album doesn't sound that much like old neptunes. the joint w/ alicia was the only one that game me immediate flashbacks to the early 2000s.

seems obv to me that this is pharrell's 'random access memories' and as someone who doesn't like RAM at all i can totally understand why people aren't really feeling GIRL but i think it's kinda banging. short and sweet, danceable. i dig it.

it doesn't sound like old neptunes so much as mid-00s rut neptunes but almost every song puts me vaguely in mind of listening to "frontin" instead

Sometimes, I think people are overly harsh on his vocals and then he puts out a song like "Hunter". Jesus.

it doesn't sound like old neptunes so much as mid-00s rut neptunes but almost every song puts me vaguely in mind of listening to "frontin" instead

― lex pretend, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 11:38 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah like compared to "frontin" this is all a bit... belabored

cee-lo comparison is very otm

ha i wouldn't say belaboured so much as...not trying hard enough?

like, JT's albums were belaboured in that they couldn't sustain the weight of what he wanted them to be. this album, there's no weight to sustain, it's all pleasant stuff that will remind people of the good old days and the golden age of timba/neps and it'll do its job, blah

Kind of a neat coincidence that the happy video was released within a week or so of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqhaMewA2K0

lex otm with that last post. Anyway, skimmed through the second half after listening through the first half, I have no desire to revisit this album.

Quite a lot of Neps production, the non-rap stuff especially, coded as retro-futuristic even at the time, finding novel twists and arrangements for really quite familiar structures, it was part of the whole appeal in the first place. Pharrell solo especially, a song like Frontin' was aiming straight for the comfort zone.

Where's Snoop Lion on this? They used to be the best combination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIQihN--98Y

i dont really hear much neptunes nostalgia here (unless you mean its biggest supporters are people who were kids when superthug came out). i mean, yeah, theres some of that in the sounds (mainly the clavinet/guitar sound) but its mostly pushed to the background. these songs arent anywhere near as sparse as old neptunes, its a much lusher, richer, 70s aesthetic hes going for. the only vaguely modern thing on it is lost queen. its basically an album for anyone who didnt know much about pharrell pre-get lucky/blurred lines. should have guessed it from happy, though for some reason i didnt think pharrell would go full on retro.

not sure about the 'new cee-lo' notion (unless you mean hes someone else who is hard to listen to for a whole album), but its def about pharrell using his old rep as innovative producer to make a shift into pharrell-as-pop-star. obv im not saying he was some underground obscurity when frontin' was out, just that it seems hes really trying a lot harder to make it work this time.

*trying harder = playing it much safer

think about half of it is pretty cool first listen. Orchestral vibe is a plus cuz a lot of Neptunes-minus-Chad Hugo minimalism in the last however-many years fails miserably imo

if "golden age" of Neptunes is circa 2002 a bunch of their/Pharrell's stuff since sounds nothing like it, whether that's a good or bad. If we're talking before '02, even moreso.

not even a new pharrell album can lure me into figuring out what "iTunes Radio" is

Not even a new Pharrell album???

it says i need os7 or something?

iTunes radio premieres are straight bullshit trust me when i tell you it's not worth fucking your shit up to hear

pretty sure you can get itunes radio premiers on your phone tho

iTunes Radio isn't in Canada so every time there's an album stream, I gotta search around for a rip like a...Canadian.

is Pharrell singing on this

On further listens, I'm really really liking Gust of Wind.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/profiles/201402/pharrell-girl-album-exclusive

“Let’s speak metaphorically through the rodeo world!” he says, urgently. “I fucking held a lamb in a Robin Thicke video. And people were into it!”

lmao

that was pretty baller

I interviewed Pharrell years ago and it was a torturous experience for both of us, but he used an expression I'd never heard before to describe N.E.R.D.'s live show: "Straight titty action!"

tortuous in what way?

He didn't want to talk, and I couldn't get him to talk. One of those interviews where you run out of questions within minutes because all you get is two-word answers. That happens with rappers sometimes, but this was especially bad

who is the model-looking chick that dances through the restaurant with Pharrell in the Happy video why because she look intersting

i like the slightly wonky instrumentation on "it girl"

Damn, there's the merest hint of real magic on this, like if the whole album was as good as the first two songs and Gust Of Wind then it would be right up there for this year.

Sadly a lot of the rest of it is pretty tepid, and if there's anything that shows up why Pharrell will never be a great frontman it's not his singing voice and more his complete inability to pull off the spoken word bit on Hunter.

The idea that Frontin' of all things is demonstrably superior to most of this record probably betrays more nostalgia than the record itself. That said, Lost Queen is so bad it's actively hilarious.

you're wrong about "frontin" also "marilyn monroe" which is totally grating

JT collab is real underwhelming imo, stuck in a low gear

"It Girl" is on the lower level of songs I like here but the outro in particular is nice

One of the things I enjoy about this album is that it's loaded with big stars who don't lend any actual star power

Frontin' is okay but it felt like minor Neptunes even at the time and wouldn't be anywhere near their best 50 songs. (Okay neither would anything here but that's beside the point).

I do quite like Marilyn Monroe though, although I think I'm generally leaning towards the ones with the syrupy strings.

"Gush" and "Gust of Wind" rank up there

well OK dunno about that but they're def. the top songs here

It was pretty amusing to see FACT pointedly put Get Lucky at #50 in their Pharrell list and then stick Grindin' at #1 thus fulfilling their mission to become as predictable as humanly possible.

this is mediocre stuff. i thought the JT collab was the best thing on it.

"Marilyn Monroe" is cool, Gwen Stefani's "U Started It" is better as far as string-heavy Neptune(s) beats go though. fuller sound.

This album is so insipid.

"Frontin'" is a top 20 Neptunes track and we already proved this with science:
NEPTUNES TRACKS POLL - RESULTS NOW!

http://blog.discopop.co.uk/2014/05/is-pharrell-williams-incapable-of.html

lol i guess i had subconsciously noticed this but hearing all of these together is kinda hilarious

Never realized it went back so far, but "Blurred Lines" made it clear this was a trademark for him.

Lol, while we're at it I think a couple more can be added to the mix:

Robin Thicke - "Wanna Love You Girl"
Common - "Universal Mind Control"
Clipse - "I'm Good"

Anything else?

forgiven because it's the best way to start a track.

also i think it's a natural thing to do if you're using a sampler (or used to using one).

ha, I had that exact "can't unhear it" revelation lately :(

he used to have some awesome intros tho! "Hot in Herre", "When the Last Time"

I like the extended version of this on "Rumpshaker"

man i've wanted to do a comp of Neptunes note-repeating-4-times intros FOREVER, bummed that someone else finally beat me to it.

i have come to realize that i'm super down with Marilyn Monroe

said many a guy upon puberty

http://www.utdallas.edu/news/imgs/photos-2013-11/jfk-550-2013-11.jpg

wonder about its utility in a musico-neuro way; like i feel as if it sorta resets yr brain for the new song.

how'd this age this summer for you guys

Ha! This album crossed my mind a couple days ago and I honestly couldn't remember if it came out this year or last.

i think i only listened to it once

I like Gust of Wind a lot!

^ posts that will be regretted

I don't think I've even listened to it entirely.
very boring stuff.
Gust of wind was OK I guess but I haven't cared enough to listen to it since...
Pharrell is just very bad on his own, huh ?
great producer/co-composer but he can't handle a whole album.

"Brand New" and "Know Who You Are" and "Freq" and "Gust of Wind" still dope to me. "Come Get It Bae" probably deserved to do better as a single.