Robin Thicke
Blurred Lines
The big hit of the Summer of 2013, Blurred Lines saw the release of 2 music videos, a NSFW version and a less racy PG version of the song. The censored version is almost shot-for-shot the same as the explicit one, except this time with all three women scantily covered in matching white crop tops and hot pants. But for all the attention the racy video garnered, it was the song's actual lyrics that made "Blurred Lines" the most controversial track of the 2010s.
When the songs singer, Thicke, and co-writer, Pharrell Williams have to defend the songs lyrics on allegations of promoting rape, you know trouble lies ahead.
Thicke, in a July 2013 interview with The Daily Star (via Digital Spy), insisted the song was just "throwaway fun" as well as a celebration of female sexual empowerment. "Pharrell [Williams] and I... have a lot of respect for women. So the way we were seeing it is, 'I know man tries to domesticate you but you're an animal, you are just like any man,'" he elaborated.
In July 2015, Thicke maintained his stance that "Blurred Lines" didn't degrade women or promote rape. He told The New York Times, "I have never and would never write a song with any negative connotation like that." The singer suggested that the music video for the song tainted its actual lyrics for people with its inclusion of nudity. "Once the video came out, that changed the conversation," Thicke observed.
For his part, Pharrell Williams told GQ magazine that he now regrets his part in "Blurred Lines." This is a departure from his previous stance — in 2014, he told Pitchfork, "People who are agitated just want to be mad, and I accept their opinion." Williams further clarified Thicke's lyrics, "Just let me liberate you.... / You don't need no papers / That man is not your maker," saying these lyrics clearly told the subject of Thicke's song that she was not a possession any man could own.
When he changed his tune in 2019 about the song's social implications, Williams shared with GQ that he had since come to see its lyrics contextualized in what he called the "chauvinist culture in our country." Williams reflected that while he and Thicke had only admiration for women in mind when they made "Blurred Lines," some of the song's vocabulary was similar to that of actual sexual predators. "I realized that there are men who use that same language when taking advantage of a woman, and it doesn't matter that that's not my behavior," Williams revealed.