All Ears English Episode 85:

Transcription

1 All Ears English Episode 85: What Happiness Means to American Hip-Hop Artist Pharrell This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 85: What Happiness Means to American Hip-Hop Artist Pharrell. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you ll finally get real, native English conversation with your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English Adventurer and Gabby Wallace, the Language Angel, from Boston, USA. In this episode, we ll tune in to the real meaning behind Pharrell s song, Happy. Hey, what s up Lindsay? Hello, hello, hello. Doing good? I m doing fine. Awesome. So today, Teaching Tuesday, we re talking about a great song by Hip-hop artist Pharrell. He is really popular these days with his song Happy. And we re going to break down the lyrics from the chorus like you guys have been asking us to do with popular music and just talk about

2 the meaning, and (uh) yeah just what, what the artist is talking about. So the chorus. Yeah, so it starts Because I m happy. Because I m happy. All right. Then clap along if you feel like a room without a roof. Well, first of all, what does clap along mean? [claps hands] Just like that? Put your hands together. Clap with someone else, right. It s the same as (um) (you know) sing along. Let s sing along, let s come along, follow me. Right. So when you add along after a verb, it means do this with me. Perfect, yeah. If you feel like a room without a roof. So Whoa! Imagine if this room didn t have a roof. What a cool analogy or comparison. (Like) you could just go through the roof Through the roof you re so happy. you re so happy. That s so cool. There s nothing containing you. You re on top. Yeah, your happiness is just oh it s just There s no limit. Yeah, no limit.

3 Both: I like that. Okay and because I m happy, clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. He s really getting to the. That s deep. core of things here. I think it s very Buddhist, (you know). It s very, it s very I don t know, just this idea that maybe happiness is the truth of life, right. It s your true essence, as you were saying before, yeah. Because I m happy, clap along if you know what happiness is to you. That s good, right? (Um) very cool. (I mean) that s a great line because he s kind of (um) giving us some incentive to figure out what makes you happy, right? Yeah, some freedom to think about it, (you know). Because I m happy, clap along because you feel like that s what you wanna do. And I wanna is of course Want to. Right. We know that.

4 So yeah, if you, if you want to be happy, if you want to clap along, go ahead, you have the freedom to do it. And it s a really fun and catchy chorus. Yeah, you have the freedom to define happiness as you, as you see fit. I really like this song. It really gets, it gets caught in your, in your head and (um) it s just fun to listen to. It gives you some good energy and now that you know what it s about, I think you can really get into the song. Definitely. So we want to have them repeat the phrases, have our listeners repeat the phrases? Let s do it. And also this is a great way to practice your English, right? When you know the lyrics to a song and you sing along as you listen. Okay, so repeat Because I m happy Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Clap along if you know what happiness is to you. Nice. Last one, Clap along if you feel like that s what you wanna (want to) do. Great. That s a fun song. I love listening to it. It s really cool. So we re gonna (going to), we re gonna (going to) embed the video in our, our site for this (um), this episode for this blog post. So

5 come on over to allearsenglish.com, you can find the song there. Have fun with it guys. Thanks for listening. Hey Lindsay. I heard that (um) one of your students was talking about the transcripts. So (um) a student of mine in Spain was saying that he is really a visual learner, so he needs to not only listen to All Ears English every day, but he also needs to see the words. Yeah, that s really helpful, I think, for a lot of people to read as they listen. So yeah, we wanted to remind you that we have the transcripts available at our website, And the transcripts are just the text of what you re hearing. Just every word that we re saying spelled out for you. So there are no secrets. You ll know exactly what you re saying, we re saying. So come on over. If you want to put your ears into English more often, be sure to subscribe to our podcast in itunes on your computer or on your smartphone. Thanks so much for listening and see you next time.