Hip-hop & rap
Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams (born 1973), producer, singer and half of the Neptunes, has written some of the century’s biggest hits, from “Get Lucky” to “Happy”. He set Montreux alight in 2014, then returned with his band N.E.R.D.
Pharrell Williams in Montreux
7 July 2014: “Happy” at the Stravinski
On 7 July 2014, in the thick of the “Happy” wave, Pharrell Williams made his debut at the Montreux Jazz Festival, at the Auditorium Stravinski. He rolled out the tracks of his album “GIRL” — “Marilyn Monroe”, “Come Get It Bae” — before closing the night on “Happy”, sung back by a standing crowd.
The set, barely an hour long, left some in the audience wanting, frustrated at getting no encore: the flip side of a star at his peak, there to offer a burst of hits rather than a long recital.
2018: the return of N.E.R.D
In 2018, for the 52nd edition, Pharrell returned to Montreux, but this time with N.E.R.D, the funk-rock-hip-hop band he formed with Chad Hugo and Shay Haley. A headliner alongside Jamiroquai, he went back to the source of his story, that of a Neptunes producer turned one of the architects of the century’s pop sound.
That a festival born of jazz should welcome both “Happy” and the abrasive beats of N.E.R.D says everything about the Montreux spirit: follow living music, whatever its label.