The "Happy" Problem

Today, I was looking at Pharrell’s “Happy” on the site. Huge hit song, well over a million views. And while there were a lot of good tates, there were also quite a few that were basically restatements with GIFs. See here, here, here, and a few more I ended up deleting:

http://imgur.com/OnG62If

http://imgur.com/fj04RhO

So the questions are: 1. How did it take a million views for this to be noticed? and 2. How many funny GIFs is too many? I realize that this is (obviously) a very lighthearted song, but having five or six annotations that consist of basically funny pictures with no content is pretty severe overkill. On specifically lighthearted songs, how can we collectively balance fun with content, and not slip too far to the “fun” side of the equation, as I argue we did here?

April 22nd, 2014
April 22nd, 2014

There should be a limit on hilarious gifs though, like a single good one is decent, but 4 or 6 (???) is pushing it tbh.

With a song like this (or others) you have to tread lightly with the content of the lyrics even if its something like Everything Is Awesome!!!, you don’t want to make it super obvious with the annotations just so its a desperate grab for IQ

April 22nd, 2014

Off-topic question: What are Rock Genius' most-viewed songs of all time?

April 23rd, 2014
April 23rd, 2014

I am pretty sure the reason being is because those lyrics are pretty self explanatory, and don’t require much of an explanation. The gifs are purely for the entertainment of the viewer, even though more viewers will probably be attracted to the lyrics they don’t understand.

April 23rd, 2014

I don’t mind GIFs, but if you’re gonna have GIFs in every. single. tate, that’s a problem IMO. Plus, I dunno about the rest of you, but when a song is overloaded with GIFs it tends to slow down my comp, which is annoying as hell.

April 23rd, 2014

I like GIFs. But I don’t like an overkill of the same type of GIF, i.e. “Happy” people being happy.

Lol.

I agree with @EmperorAguila, the GIFs substitute the lack of content (be it due to the annotater not delving further or the lyric not necessitating annotation). To counter that, I’d highlight more text to annotate.

The chorus should be annotated in one bulk, rather than having this and this… just merge those two.

It’d be cool if someone knew something deeper about the creation of the lyrics, i.e., from something Pharrell stated during an interview. I often try to find quotes artist’s say regarding their own material, particularly as I listen to a lot of interviews.

April 23rd, 2014

If there’s not much to say, people aren’t going to say much.

If it’s a hella popular track with white space, people gonna ‘tate. So unless you’re replacing “average” annotations with constructive insights, those annotations literally serve the purpose a placeholder so nothing worse appears there.

April 24th, 2014

If it’s a hella popular track with white space, people gonna ‘tate. So unless you’re replacing “average” annotations with constructive insights, those annotations literally serve the purpose a placeholder so nothing worse appears there.

So we have at least three choices:

  1. Keep the filler annotations, edit them for page performance, and use them as placeholders.
  2. Delete the placeholders, and vigilantly watch the page to delete any future placeholders.
  3. Get the already burdened tech team to create untatable text.
  4. Find how to make those placeholders into good annotations.
April 24th, 2014

Personally I really like gifs in moderation, and I mostly try to avoid these black and white tumblr ones as I feel they’re a bit of a fast track to find an image!

I can’t remember exactly who said it from the pop team or when (Maybe @Ezzo?) but on Pop songs the perfect gif really makes the annotation SO much more accessible in general!

April 25th, 2014

ON popular songs, people are going to annotate the lines regardless. Unless the songs outdated.

TBH @SameOldShawn I don’t think you should of deleted the second one. When it was one of the top four songs. That’s the gif image that made me check it out in the first place. I thought it represented well, dancing is one of the best displays of emotion. Along with them smiling only adds to the feeling. The song already makes you want to do that.
http://imgur.com/dN9qCaE
I think it should of been moved to cover the first line of the second verse but not deleted by any means. RockG is not RapG. It tends to focus more on the expression rather than the wordplay etc.

@Wandawaisu

It’d be cool if someone knew something deeper about the creation of the lyrics, i.e., from something Pharrell stated during an interview. I often try to find quotes artist’s say regarding their own material, particularly as I listen to a lot of interviews.

I do too. Especially if you can find track by track reviews by the artists themselves, even cooler.

However, the only reason I disagree with the chorus in one part is, because you watch different authors show expressions of happiness with their gifs. Which is really cool. Don’t get me wrong though I’m a big fan of the one annotated chorus for songs.

It was the like the song was no longer my song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQdjnh4_M5M
Watch what people around the world were doing. DANCING

But if we’re really going to complain about a song like this. The only line that should be annotated is the hot air balloon line.

The song is all about expression and plenty self-explanatory, but someone somewhere will annotate it. There’s not much content to give, besides maybe background

April 26th, 2014

This annotation popped up:

http://rock.rapgenius.com/Pharrell-williams-happy-lyrics#note-3127603

We have a dilemma: We either keep these kind of annotations, or we put energy into constantly deleting them It’s like the “what rhymes with ‘hug me’” annotation on Blurred Lines: people can’t help but continuing contributing to it.

April 28th, 2014
0 new posts. Show

Create an account to post a reply!