Jeff Bhasker On "Uptown Funk's" Long Road to the Grammys

Just when we thought “Uptown Funk” had retired to the suburbs, Bruno Mars stormed the Super Bowl with a floating cloud of backup singers 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.

With a separate Grammy nomination (his second) for Producer of the Year, and credits last year ranging from Ed Sheeran to A$AP Rocky, Bhasker is one of those behind-the-scenes players who reveal the fluidity of genres and how small the pop world is.

“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 told The Wall Street Journal. “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.”