And then, in the spring of last year, he got a call from Daft Punk’s label, Columbia. “And they’re like, “Look, we know that you’re not interested in doing another solo album. But we know that you’re going to change your mind. Even if you’re not ready now, we know you’re going to change your mind. And since we know that, we'd like to get ahead of it and change your mind and tell you, “Look, here's a deal. Go make whatever album you want to make.”It took some convincing. But by the time he signed, he already knew what the album would be, what it’d be called, how it would sound. “I instantly knew that the name of the album was called G I R L, and the reason why is because women and girls, for the most part, have just been so loyal to me and supported me.”I ask him what he means.There is no breathing human being on this planet that did not benefit by a woman saying yes twice,” Pharrell says. “Yes to make you, and yes to have you. Point-blank. If women wanted to cripple the economy, all they gotta do is not go to work.
You mean work like...?Period. Work at work, work at home. Okay? If they wanted to end our species, cripple our species—seriously! Like, women can look out into space at all the stars and go, ‘You know what? I can actually end all the human life on this planet right now. All I gotta do is just say no.’ There’s a huge value placed on that—you know, on something so simple like if all our talk-show hosts late at night all were women, that’s a very different world.He’s gotten older, he says, and so have some of the people who listen to his music. “Man, you gotta see the 60-year-old women dancing to ‘Blurred Lines,’ and they know it’s about them, and they don’t care what you think, and they’re going to come over here and tell you that that’s their record.”