Everything really is awesome
The untold story behind that Lego earworm
As he was nominated for a best original Oscar on Jan. 15, Joshua Bartholomew was asleep next to Lisa Harriton, his wife and co-songwriter on The Lego Movie anthem “Everything Is Awesome.”
Having worked late into the night, the couple, who record together as Jo Li but regularly perform separately, were eventually woken from their slumber by a deluge of well-wishing text messages. Recalling the hazy morning a month later, the 30-year-old Canadian Army brat says he tried to make up for the missed announcement by relishing the moment for as long as he could. “I’m not going to lie I started crying a little bit,” he says. “It’s the pinnacle of entertainment award achievement.”
This Sunday, the duo begin their drive to that zenith with an appearance at the Grammy Awards, where they — along with “Awesome” co-writers Shawn Patterson and the comedy rap group The Lonely Island — are nominated for best song written for visual media, alongside the likes Karen O and Ed Sheeran. But, like the song’s message, the origin of “Everything Is Awesome” is more complicated than one would imagine.
The song began as a note on The Lego Movie’s script: a peppy and fun — yet underlying Orwellian — mantra. Around 2012, Patterson — who had worked with the film’s editor on the TV series Robot Chicken — was drafted
We didn’t know the scope of the song until the premiere
to pen the tune. At the time, the comic songwriter was going through a bitter divorce and used the song as a means to escape his real-world doldrums. He produced a simplified version of the song in both sombre acoustic and chipper programmed options, but Warner Bros. executives felt there was something missing from his demos.
Around that time, Bartholomew and Harriton were out for drinks in L.A. with friends when one of them, a Warner employee, explained the song’s conundrum. “She was talking about this movie about Legos and how they’re having a really hard time figuring out the right version of a song that they had called ‘ Everything Is Awesome,’ ” Bartholomew says. “I heard Lego as a buzzword and was instantly interested.”
The friend sent over a copy of Patterson’s demo with the instructions: “Here’s what we have so far, make it awesome.” The duo, who were still dating at the time, sat in their living room and began collaborating on new lyrics and a punchy production, which blended Harriton’s high-pitched voice and Bartholomew’s smooth natural tone. Bartholomew, who learned production in his basement as a co-op course while attending high school in Allison, Ont., produced the track and submitted the new version under the blended moniker Jo Li. And that was that for about a year in a half.
While they waited to hear back, the couple got married. Bartholomew continued recording under his last name and singing with The Nick Perry Group while Harriton, who had been a member of The Smashing Pumpkins as well as a touring keyboardist for Ke$ha and Adam Lambert, began a solo project under the moniker Elle Rae.
Meanwhile, the Jo Li version of the song was making its round to the production of the film in Australia. Eventually, an invitation to the film’s premiere showed up at Bartholomew and Harriton’s home. When they attended they were surprised to discover their version appears in the film several times (the rendition sung by Canadian twins Tegan and Sara only appears in the film’s end credits).
“It was so surreal,” Bartholomew says. “We’re such a big part of this song, which is a big part in the movie, but we were in the dark. We literally didn’t know the scope of the song until we went to the premiere and then five minutes in the song comes on.”
Almost a year later, Jo Li are working on songs for The
Lego Movie 2 as well as the upcoming spinoff, Lego Bat
man. Harriton is being measured for dresses for this year’s Grammys and Bartholomew is dreaming of having his idols sing “Everything is Awesome” at the Academy Awards.
“I think it would not only be incredible but hilarious to watch a classic act like Paul McCartney or Robert Plant [sing it],” he says, while Harriton offers that she’d “crap my pants if Katy Perry did it.”
“Clearly, we’re a house divided,” Bartholomew jokes. “But the fact that this fun little thing we worked on in our living room for a movie we didn’t know much about. To see that go from conception, to getting released, to going No. 1 internationally, everybody falling in love with it, from that moment we started until now it’s been such a crazy, surreal ride.
“The goal is to enjoy it, really enjoy the moment.”