Singer Robin Thicke’s hit “Blurred Lines” has been a minefield of controversy in a number of ways, and in a recent deposition, the star may have added another layer of buzz to the brouhaha.
Robin Thicke quickly crossed over to the mainstream when “Blurred Lines” hit the top of the charts in both the US and the UK. But the song’s themes of dubious consent and sexual pressure struck a dissonant chord with many listeners, causing a bit of backlash about its rape culture-esque tone. Additionally, the star was accused of ripping off the late soul singer Marvin Gaye due to the similarities between the track and Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.”
The latter kerfuffle resulted in the recent release of what Billboard has dubbed “sensational testimony” on the part of Thicke in battling Gaye’s family’s allegations. In a portion of his statements, the singer denied deliberately using “Got to Give It Up” as inspiration, despite a comment made earlier to GQ in which he had appeared to state otherwise.
In May 2013, Thicke said during the interview:
“Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up.’ I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.’ Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it.”
Now, Thicke says, his original statements were made out of a combination of potential drug-induced befuddlement as well as a misplaced desire for unearned credit. In the recently released deposition, he revised his earlier comments:
“To be honest, that’s the only part where — I was high on Vicodin and alcohol when I showed up at the studio. So my recollection is when we made the song, I thought I wanted — I — I wanted to be more involved than I actually was by the time, nine months later, it became a huge hit and I wanted credit. So I started kind of convincing myself that I was a little more part of it than I was and I — because I didn’t want him — I wanted some credit for this big hit. But the reality is, is that Pharrell had the beat and he wrote almost every single part of the song.”
In the deposition, Robin Thicke claimed he embellished the backstory of “Blurred Lines” in order to drive record sales.
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