Did Pharrell’s “24 Hours Of ‘Happy'” Rip Off Girl Walk // All Day?
Last year, well before “Happy” became the inescapable 10-week reigning #1 single it is today, Pharrell released a star-studded, globetrotting 24-hour music video for the song. It inspired more than 1,000 remakes and became the kind of viral sensation that everybody saw. That included Anne Marsen, a 24-year-old Brooklyn actress and dancer who couldn’t help but notice some striking similarities between “24 Hours Of ‘Happy'” and Girl Walk // All Day, a 71-minute film she made in 2011 in which she dances in locations around New York City to the sounds of Girl Talk’s mashup album All Day. So she made this video to point out the resemblance.
Marsen told Spin that she and Girl Walk director Jacob Krupnik are not mad, just disappointed: “Jacob and I were saying, we agree, it’s a great thing that dance is getting recognition as a long-form kind of thing, because we want to be making more projects that we’re dreaming up now that are in this form. Yet at the same time we feel like we’re not getting the recognition for this.” A rep for Pharrell said neither the artist nor directing team We Are From L.A. had seen Girl Walk // All Day and that the “Happy” video is based on the film Despicable Me 2, for which the song was written.
What say y’all? Is it time to bust out the sad version of “Happy” again and shed a single tear?