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And Finally Artist News
Robin Thicke won’t make a video like Blurred Lines “ever again”
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 15 February 2021
If you were wondering if Robin Thicke is going to make another music video like the one for ‘Blurred Lines’, the answer is “no”. Were you wondering that?
Well, now the thought has been pushed into your mind, maybe you’re wondering why he has said that. You’re still reading this, after all.
Is it because he doesn’t want to repeat himself? Or because he doesn’t command the sort of budgets that would allow him to make such a video now? Or maybe he recognises that the misogyny in the video coupled with that contained in the song’s lyrics created a perfect storm that highlighted some damaging attitudes that are ingrained in society and culture.
If you answered c) misogyny, then please collect your souvenir beer tankard. Because even Thicke now seems to have accepted his role in pushing outdated ideas with his biggest hit – about attempting to coerce a woman into having sex – and its accompanying video – in which nude women danced around three fully-clothed men, ie Thicke, Pharrell Williams and TI.
“I had lost perspective on my personal life and my music and what was appropriate … and why I was doing it”, Thicke tells the New York Post about the phase of his career that delivered ‘Blurred Lines’. “I’d lost the intention, you know what I mean? I needed to regain my perspective and my positive intention of what my music was for – and what my life was for”.
This change of heart comes as Thicke tries to revive is career off the back of some success as a judge on the US version of ‘The Masked Singer’. Over the past eight years, he’s generally defended ‘Blurred Lines’, of course. And he still does, to an extent.
“We had no negative intentions when we made the record, when we made the video”, he says. “But then it did open up a conversation that needed to be had. And it doesn’t matter what your intentions were when you wrote the song … the people were being negatively affected by it. And I think now, obviously, culture, society has moved into a completely different place. You won’t see me making any videos like that ever again”.
So, I guess the short version of this is possibly: it would be a bad move commercially to try that sort of stunt again. Although, you could also argue – based on Thicke’s career since ‘Blurred Lines’ – that it was a pretty bad move back then too.
That said, in the subsequent song theft legal battle with the Marvin Gaye estate, it came up that Thicke hadn’t really had much of a hand in the writing the song itself, beyond suggesting a vague sound for the track and then falling asleep on a sofa. The misogynistic lyrics, therefore, were all the work of Pharrell, who seemed to do a pretty good job of shaking off criticism about the track.
Anyway, now Thicke has a comeback album out, called ‘On Earth, And In Heaven’. With this, he says, he wanted to put out something “healing and loving”, that “helped people get through their hard times and see the light at the end of the tunnel”. Is a new Robin Thicke album what you needed to get you through the remainder of lockdown? Only time will tell.
