Pharrell Williams has produced some of the biggest songs of the last 25 years, from Kelis’s “Milkshake” to his own global hit “Happy”. He has also spoken openly about synaesthesia, a difference in perception that means he experiences music as colour. In his 2024 LEGO-animated film Piece by Piece, he put that experience on screen. In this blog, we look at what synaesthesia is, what Pharrell has said about it in his own words, and what it can teach employers about sensory differences at work.
What is synaesthesia?
Synaesthesia is when one sense or concept automatically triggers an experience in another. For some people, letters and numbers have their own colours (grapheme-colour synaesthesia). For others, days of the week or months of the year sit in a particular place in space, or sounds and music produce colours and shapes. When music or sound triggers colour, it is often called chromesthesia.
According to the UK Synaesthesia Association, around 4% of people have some form of synaesthesia, and it is more common in first-degree relatives of synaesthetes, which suggests a genetic component. The Association is clear that synaesthesia is not a physical or mental health condition. It describes it as a difference in perceptual experience that is generally positive.
Many synaesthetes, especially as children, do not realise their experience is unusual. To them, the colour of a song or a letter is simply how the world is.
Pharrell’s experience with synaesthesia
Pharrell has talked about seeing music in colour for more than a decade. In a 2014 interview with the radio show The Dinner Party Download, he said: “Believe it or not, ‘Happy’ has always been yellow and red for me. It’s weird.”
Speaking to Tonya Mosley on NPR’s Fresh Air in October 2024, he explained how he understands it. He described how the senses are connected when we are born and how many of those connections are pruned in early childhood: “And sometimes some of them stay connected. And the ones that stay connected give you synesthesia.” The result, he said, is that “you end up ‘hearing’ a color or ‘seeing’ a sound.”
In the same NPR interview, he described the synth lines on “Milkshake”: “And those synth lines are yellow and brown for me.” He added that the shapes he sees are hard to explain, “but it sort of zig zags.”
For Pharrell, the colours are part of how he knows a sound is right, rather than a quirk on the side of his work.
Inside the documentary “Piece by Piece”
Piece by Piece, directed by Morgan Neville and released in October 2024, tells Pharrell’s life story entirely in LEGO animation. One of its biggest creative challenges was showing synaesthesia to an audience who have never experienced it.
Pharrell told Complex that “The synesthesia experience is unique to each person,” so the job was to explain his own experience, “and not only what my mind’s eye sees, but also how it makes me feel.” Neville said the team brought in an animator specifically to work on the synaesthesia sequences, and that he went through song after song asking Pharrell what colours he saw. Those answers shaped the bursts of coloured LEGO that appear whenever music takes over the screen.
Two people with synaesthesia can experience it very differently. There is no single version, just as there is no single way to be neurodivergent.
Beyond Pharrell: the science and other perspectives
Pharrell is not the only musician to speak about it. Billie Eilish has described how, for her, “every day of the week has a color, a number, a shape,” and has said that most of her music videos have to do with synaesthesia. Lorde has also said her synaesthesia helps her write music.
So is synaesthesia a form of neurodivergence? It is not a diagnosis and it is not usually listed alongside ADHD, autism or dyslexia. But it is a genuine difference in how a brain processes information, which is why it is often discussed under the wider neurodiversity umbrella. There is also an overlap with autism. The National Autistic Society reports research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (2013) which found that 18.9% of autistic adults reported synaesthesia, compared with 7.2% of non-autistic adults. You can read more about sensory differences in our guide to autism in the workplace.
Like many people in the public eye who talk openly about how their brain works, from Cat Burns to David Beckham and his OCD, Pharrell helps make these differences feel normal rather than strange.
The creative impact of synaesthesia
In Pharrell’s case, perceiving the world differently has clearly helped his work. For a producer, hearing a track as a set of colours gives a second way to judge it.
What synaesthesia means at work
Most people with synaesthesia will never need any adjustments. For some, though, the extra layer of sensory information can be tiring, especially in busy, noisy or visually cluttered environments. Someone who sees colours with sound may find an open-plan office with constant background noise more draining than their colleagues do.
The barriers here sit in the environment, not the person, and the fixes are usually simple: access to quieter spaces, the option to wear headphones, control over screen colours and fonts, and written information in a clear, consistent format. Our guide to how neurodiversity shows up at work and our working styles guide are practical starting points for those conversations.
For employers, the wider point is that people experience the same workplace in very different ways. Organisations that ask people what they need, and then act on it, get more from everyone. Find out more in our overview of neurodiversity in the workplace.
How Enna can help
Designing for sensory and cognitive differences is a big part of our work with employers. Neurodiversity 101 training gives teams a shared starting point, workplace needs assessments work out adjustments for individual employees, and our neuroinclusion audits and consultancy look at your environment, policies and processes together. If you’re not sure where you stand, try our neuroinclusion maturity assessment or book a call with our team.
And if you’re looking for work yourself, the Enna jobs board lists roles with employers committed to neuroinclusion. Sign up for job alerts and you’ll hear about new ones first.
