As soon as I heard this song on Urban 75 the other day - via this viralling video - I always knew this was going to be this week's Monday Toonage, but a few silly spats on Facebook about nothing - politics, since you're wondering - and Fusspot and Drama taking turns at being sick and taking time off school, means that I need this joyous song more than ever. Monday Toonage turning into everyday of the week Toonage. (Neither Kara, nor the kids, approve.)
Maybe it was because of the above linked video, but I did initially think it was some lost Northern Soul classic from back in the day but a google search put me right, and I once again realised how out of touch I am with music released in the last five years. Usually me wallowing in back catalogues doesn't distress me too much, but the thought that I'm missing out on wonderful music like this because I'm not going out of my way to listen to newish music makes me rather miserable. Relying on occasionally stumbling across good new music via a 30 second snippet of a good song on a quality tv drama is really not going to help me if I spend 2014 catching up on Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife and the 217 tv adaptations of Jane Austen novels in the last 15 years. I need a plan of action and, yet, why I think out of that I immediately think of the mod revivalists Secret Affair from thirty-five years ago. I need a hip nephew and niece somewhere, anywhere, to make me mixtapes but first I'll have to explain to them what a mixtape is.
Back to the toonage . . . the spurious point of this post. The song selected - which you'll already know if you clicked on the link above - is Pharrell Williams' Happy. Joyous and wonderful, and I still feel that despite the fact that apparently it's from a kids film. The gimmick is that he made a 24 hour video of the song, which involves hourly segments on YouTube kicking off with Pharrell performing the song for four and a bit minutes and then it being given over to various people shaking their stuff to the song on loop. From what I've seen, it works, but that's because it's one of those songs that when you first hear it, you want to play it over and over again. Get back to me six months from now to see if I'm still waxing lyrically about it.
The video embedded below is the official cut version of the video, which is a selection of various Pharrell performances, and sundry others lip-synching away like good ones, strutting their stuff and Jimmy Kimmel doing a brilliant impersonation of the stiffest white guy on this planet and a thousand other undiscovered planets peppered across the universe:
As it is a 24 hour video, another wee link for your consideration. Of course, I haven't watched all 24 hours but this particular performance/interpretation caught my eye of those that I have seen. Some great moves in the clip . . . and wee boy's good as well.
And the aforementioned "silly spats on Facebook about nothing", well, as long as I remind myself of this cartoon everyday that I choose to venture on the internet, then I'll be ok. Fine and beano, in fact:
