Just when we thought “Uptown Funk” had retired to the suburbs, Bruno Mars stormed the Super Bowl with a floating cloud of backup singers (and low-key support from Mark Ronson) to remind us why the tune became the soundtrack to 2015 and a leading contender for Record of the Year at Monday’s Grammy Awards.

Producer Jeff Bhasker wasn’t shimmying or singing on stage during halftime, but he shares sweat equity (and windfall songwriting royalties) with the stars of the hit single. It took nearly a year and about 100 different versions before “Uptown Funk” reached its full potential in the studio, says Bhasker, who produced the song with Ronson, Mars and the singer’s longtime songwriting partner Philip Lawrence.

“If you work a lot, and generate a lot of material, you’re going to find a home for it,” Bhasker says with some understatement. His three Grammy wins span tracks by fun. (“We are Young”), Kanye West (“All of the Lights”), and Jay Z and Rihanna (“Run This Town”).

“Uptown Funk” didn’t transpire so swiftly. “It took five minutes to come up with the first 16 or 24 bars, then 9 months to get the rest of the song,” Bhasker says. “The biggest problem was that the [intro] was so great. How do you deliver a song that keeps getting better one or two minutes in or at the chorus?”

He compared the trial-and-error process to solving a Rubik’s Cube. After trying many musical combinations (and occasionally walking away from the track to get a fresh perspective) the songwriters went back to basics.

“I think it was Bruno who suggested we just get on the instruments and play the song as if we were a band, and that way we’d really see what the essential parts were,” says Bhasker, noting that he was on keyboard and “yelling a lot.”

It was another group effort for the producers and musicians who had also created Mars’s hit album “Unorthodox Jukebox.” Bhasker says, “We got the camaraderie and team spirit without the inevitability of hating each and breaking up, which bands tend to do. As a producer, you don’t always get to have that feeling of being in a band.”

Source: WSJ