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Pharrell Williams got fired from McDonald’s three times and ate nuggets at work
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Pharrell Williams got fired from McDonald’s three times and ate nuggets at work

Pharrell Williams ponders his expulsion from the golden arches.

The “Happy” singer recently recalled his ill-fated attempts to work in fast food.

“McDonald’s, my first and only job, I was fired three times,” Williams said in a new interview with the BBC. “I was eating the chicken nuggets.”

Pharrell Williams.

Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty


The 13-time Grammy Award winner was essentially kicked out for snacking at work. “It got me in trouble,” Williams said. “I got fired three times. Not for the same thing. The first two times, it was just because I was lazy. The third time, it was just kind of like, ‘Dude, what- What are you doing? Why are you just sitting there, eating nuggets?’”

As he tells it, the successful producer fell victim to the temptation of restaurant sauces. “I thought the sweet and sour sauce and the chicken nugget were pretty, an alchemical combination,” he explained. “I was one of those kids, I just liked flavors. So I would have sweet and sour on one, and on the other I would have ranch. And I would just go back and forth.”

Despite his multiple layoffs from the restaurant, Williams ended up working with McDonald’s on a jingle in the early 2000s. “I thought it was ironic and very funny,” he said. on The hot ones last month.

Williams concocted Justin Timberlake2003’s “I’m Lovin’ It” as part of the NSYNC singer’s sponsorship deal with Mickey D’s. Because the track incorporated the brand’s now-iconic five-note “ba da ba ba ba” jingle, ad execs Tom Batoy, Franco Tortora and the aptly named Andreas Forberger also received a writing credit for the song.

Pharrell Williams.

Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty


Williams clarified that he was not directly involved in the composition of the jingle, but simply the song it inspired. “(McDonald’s) brought it to us and asked us to make a song out of it,” he explained on The hot ones. “I mean, I didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I had an idea for McDonald’s: da da da da da, I love it.’ It was more like incorporating a jingle, you know, an idea and the concept that they had around it.”

The musician didn’t care whether he was associated with the jingle. “I think people think I was like, ‘Wait a second, wait, it’s going to be three days or whatever, five, and I love it,'” he said. “That’s not what happened. It was more them saying, ‘Can you make a song out of this?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, sure.'”

It’s possible that Williams is distancing himself from the McDonald’s bop to avoid conflict with his frequent collaborator and longtime friend. Pusha Tthat he knew since the rapper was in middle school. Pusha T claimed he wrote the five-note jingle in 2016, which Batoy contested.

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