At the time of writing, “80-odd years of Happy” had 7,116,440 views
Certain music can be relied upon to instantly improve our mood and unsurprisingly, the song by 42 year old American singer, songwriter, rapper and record producer, Pharrell Williams entitled “Happy” does just that.
Williams wrote Happy as one of three original songs for the motion picture soundtrack of the animated 2013 children’s film, Despicable Me 2 (the successful sequel to Despicable Me). The song won Pharrell a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2014. At the time of writing, the official YouTube video clip for the song had a whopping 617,228,614 views.
Move over Pharrell!
What you may not know is that a bunch of residents, staff and friends from a retirement village in Christchurch – Diana Isaac Retirement Village – in
New Zealand produced their own YouTube video cover version of the upbeat hit last year, starring then 79 year old resident and retired engineer, Alister Leckie as Pharrell Williams.
More than 60 residents and staff participated in the filming over four days in May 2014. They titled the video, “80-odd years of Happy” and it was an instant hit. It ‘went viral’ around the globe, shared and re-shared via social media by thousands of people, inevitably gaining the attention of Pharrell Williams himself. A chuffed Williams ‘tweeted’ his enthusiastic approval of the clip (see picture), sending it on a second, even bigger wave of popularity; requests for interviews came pouring in from media all over the world and, again at the time of writing, “80-odd years of Happy” had 7,116,440 views. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs of a certain age!
Following the success of this venture, the company that operates the Diana Isaac Retirement Village, Ryman, has worked with residents to record another cover song video for YouTube. This one is called “80-odd years of Disco” and is an 8 minute cover of a compilation of hits from the 1977 disco classic, Saturday Night Fever. This one is produced at one of their villages in Auckland – Edmund Hillary Retirement Village – but there is a cameo appearance from Al ‘Pharrell’ Leckie and probably a few others who traveled to the North Island from Diana Isaac. Check out “80-odd years of Disco”
