Pharrell Williams recalls McDonald's firing him 3 times: 'Why are you just sitting there eating nuggets?'

He found the mix of sweet and sour sauce and chicken nuggets "pretty, an alchemical combination."

Pharrell Williams is reflecting on his expulsion from the golden arches.

The "Happy" singer and hit-making producer recently recalled his ill-fated attempts to work in fast food.

"McDonald's, my first and only job — got fired three times," Williams said in a new interview with the BBC. "I was eating the chicken nuggets."

The 13-time Grammy winner was essentially booted for munching on the job. "It got me in trouble," Williams said. "I got fired three times. Not for the same thing. The first two times, it was just because I was lazy. The third time, it was just kind of like, 'Dude, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting there eating nuggets? What are you doing?'"

As he tells it, Williams fell victim to the temptation of the eatery's sauces. "I found the sweet and sour sauce and the chicken nugget pretty, an alchemical combination," he explained. "I was one of those kids, I just liked flavors. So I would have sweet and sour on one, and on the other one I would have ranch. And I'd just go back and forth."

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Despite his multiple dismissals from the chain restaurant, Williams ended up working with McDonald's on a jingle in the early 2000s. "I thought it was ironic, and I thought it was very funny," he said on Hot Ones last month.

Williams cooked up Justin Timberlake's 2003 single "I'm Lovin' It" as part of the NSYNC singer's endorsement deal with Mickey D's. Because the track incorporated the brand's now-iconic five-note "ba da ba ba ba" jingle into it, ad executives Tom Batoy, Franco Tortora, and the aptly named Andreas Forberger also received a songwriting credit for the song.

Williams clarified that he wasn't directly involved in the composition of the jingle — just the song it inspired. "[McDonald's] brought that to us and asked us to make a song out of it," he explained on Hot Ones. "I mean, I didn't wake up one day and say, 'Oh, I got an idea for McDonald's: da da da da da, I'm loving it.' It was more like incorporating a jingle, you know, an idea and the concept that they had around."

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The musician didn't care if he was associated with the jingle. "I think people think that I was like, 'Wait a second, hold on, it's going to be three das or whatever it is, five, and I'm loving it,'" he said. "That's not what happened. It was more of them saying, 'Can you make a song out of this?' And we were like, 'Yeah, sure.'"

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It's possible that Williams is distancing himself from the McDonald's bop to avoid beef with his frequent collaborator and longtime friend Pusha T, whom he has known since the rapper was in middle school. Pusha T claimed that he wrote the five-note jingle in 2016, which Batoy has disputed.

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