Given the fact that it’s been eight years since Pharrell Williams released a solo record, the arrival of ‘GIRL’, with just a couple of weeks’ notice, should have added this collection to the ever-expanding ‘surprise’ pile. But, he’ll have to make do with watching Beyoncé and David Bowie from the outside.
It’s true that almost a decade has ticked away since the braggadocio-fuelled ‘In My Mind’ arrived, but Williams has hardly been cultivating a reputation as the pop world’s Miss Havisham in the intervening years. His midas touch has, if anything, become even more ubiquitous.
In the last 12 months, for example, he’s contributed to Daft Punk’s Get Lucky and Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, to which ‘GIRL’ appears as something of a riposte. Where Thicke, Williams and T.I were alternately sleazy and menacing during Blurred Lines, ‘GIRL’ takes a celebratory approach. It is, in his own words, “an ode to women, period”.
That’s not to say, of course, that he’s completely dispensed with innuendo. But, this is a record filled with knowing winks and smiling charm rather than lascivious gazes, even on songs as willingly see-through as Gush, which is about exactly what you think it’s about.
Williams has embraced his love of Michael Jackson and neatly requisitioned Nile Rodgers’ shimmering disco guitars, with his outlandish, often ridiculous, lyrics acting more as window dressing than anything else. The celebration, then, doesn’t extend much beyond a few balloons and streamers.
His skill as a producer is writ large across its 10 tracks, though, with each and every aspect meticulously polished. The string intro to Marilyn Monroe is sumptuous, the bass pops and wriggles, while his command of harmonies is something to behold throughout. There’s not a hair out of place.
Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys all drop in, with Timberlake’s turn on Brand New the pick of the bunch by some distance, while Happy, a mega hit lifted from the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2, is planted firmly at its core.
That its loose, playful innocence remains the best example of what Williams is trying to do here sums up many of the problems on ‘GIRL’. It’s stylish and has aspirations to be something meaningful, but, sadly, it’s not. Pop music you can dance to? Yes. Something that scratches beneath the surface? No.
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