Pharrell Williams - G I R L

Pharrell Williams could scarcely have asked for a more agreeable year than the one he has just experienced. Having drifted into a rut of stale production work and underwhelming guest appearances, his spectacular reboot commenced with the mega-hit ‘Get Lucky’, continued with the similarly massive ‘Blurred Lines’, and stretched into a third consecutive smash, G I R L’s lead single, ‘Happy’. Certainly, he would appear to have rediscovered the Midas touch he enjoyed as one half of the enormously successful production duo, The Neptunes.

Williams’ work under that guise – alongside collaborator Chad Hugo – was striking for being both musically innovative and commercially huge, a trick he looks likely to repeat with G I R L, which is a masterclass in brilliantly produced pop. The singer starts as he means to go on with opener ‘Marilyn Monroe’, an infectious, dance-flavoured number, in which he summarises the album’s outlook with the lines, “This one goes out to all the lovers / What can we do – we’re hopeless romantics.”

‘Brand New’ fairly pops and fizzes thanks to a generous sprinkling of Williams’ sonic stardust, and if its electro-funk feel is reminiscent of Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, it’s only fitting, given that JT himself appears on the track. ‘Hunter’, meanwhile, ups the production ante even further thanks to its down and dirty grooves, and also boasts some Prince-like falsetto from Williams.

Elsewhere, Miley Cyrus adds some attitude to ‘Come Get It Bae’, Daft Punk contribute lounge funk rhythms – and the inevitable robot vocal interlude – to ‘Gust Of Wind’, and Alicia Keys gives a typically soulful performance on ‘Know Who You Are’. However, the finest moment is arguably closing track ‘It Girl’, which sets its stall out as a slice of glitchy electro-pop, before abruptly launching into a wonderfully off-kilter funk jam.

Williams has made some noises about G I R L addressing the rampant laddishness of ‘Blurred Lines’ (a few excitable early reviews even detected elements of – wait for it – feminism), although ultimately it doesn’t say anything more sophisticated than Pharrell loves women, and he’d like to get it on with quite a lot of them. Still, when the grooves are this good, it’s hard to argue. A tour de force of stylish, modern pop, G I R L is going to be impossible to avoid in 2014.