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Pharrell Says Cee Lo Green Recorded & Almost Release ‘Happy’

It's hard to disassociate the song "Happy" with its singer, Pharrell Williams, but the Grammy-winning producer says his infectious pop song was almost released by Cee Lo Green.

"(Cee Lo) wanted to do it…and he did do it," Pharrell, 40, told Howard Stern, according to The Guardian.
"He sounded amazing on it."

Cee Lo, 39, would have been a fitting choice. The "Forget You" singer had a similar run with his happy break up song back in 2010. But Pharrell explained that the "powers that be" decided not to go with Cee Lo's version of "Happy."

"He burns my version!" Pharrell said. "But ... how do I say this diplomatically? The powers that be, at the time, did not see it fit for him. Some folks on his team just felt that the priority should be on (Cee Lo's) album at the time … so they elected not to do that song."

Luckily the former "Voice" judge didn't have any hard feelings about missing out on what would later become the Oscar-nominated hit.

"He was one of the most gracious people about it when ('Happy') came out," Pharrell said.

The reception to "Happy" caught even Pharrell off guard. Seeing a video montage of people all over the world performing his song while on Oprah's "Prime" show moved the Neptunes producer to tears.

"Why am I crying on Oprah?" he laughed. "It's overwhelming because it's like, I love what I do, and I just appreciate the fact that people have believed in me for so long that I could make it to this point to feel that."

Ok! So when I first heard Happy, I said that sounds like a Cee Lo record to me! Pharrell is kill'em since Cee Lo had to fall back behind him druging chicks & date raping'em & sh!t!