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Blurred Lines and Blurred Judgement · Jon's WTF Music Moments

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome to John's WTF Music Moments. The show where music
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: history gets weird enough that you start thinking, wait, are
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: we sure this actually happened? So, folks, pop music has
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: had its fair share of bad albums. There are albums
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: that flop, there are albums that critics hate, and then
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: there are albums where years later people look back and say,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: What the actual fuck was that guy thinking? And this,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: my friends, brings us to Robin Thicke. Now, before we
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: get into discussing this turd of an album called Paula,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I need to establish something. Because if you're under, say,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: 30 years old, you might not fully remember just how
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: enormous Robin Thicke was in 2013. Just how thick his
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: level of success was, pardon the pun. This wasn't some
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: guy having a minor hit. This wasn't, oh yeah, Robin
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Thicke had that one song that one time. No. For
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: about six months, Robin Thicke was fucking everywhere. And I
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  Speaker 1: mean everywhere. He was in the thick of MTV superstardom. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I'll stop now. So the song was Blurred Lines. Yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you know you remember. You know you liked it. That
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: song was absolutely inescapable. It was number one in 25 countries.
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  Speaker 1: 25 countries, think about that now. Most average Americans can't
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  Speaker 1: even name 25 different countries. This guy had a number
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  Speaker 1: one single in 25 countries. It was one of the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: biggest singles of the decade. And suddenly, Robin Thicke, who
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: had already been an established and a somewhat successful R
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: & B singer for years, was a superstar. He had
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  Speaker 1: the hit. He had the looks. He had the famous father.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: He had the beautiful actress wife. He was rich. He
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: was famous. That video was all over MTV. And then
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: there was the regular video. And then there was the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: uncensored version. that you could only see online, in which
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you could see Emily Ratajkowski's bare breasts. Pharrell Williams was
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: even in the video. Fortunately, we didn't see Pharrell's bare breasts.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Thicke was dancing with Miley Cyrus at the MTV Music
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  Speaker 1: Video Awards, and everything was going great. Except, it wasn't.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Because by this point, there was already a lot going on.
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  Speaker 1: Blurred Lines was controversial from the beginning because of its lyrics, imagery,
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  Speaker 1: and music video. There was a huge debate about the
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  Speaker 1: song's treatment of women and whether its supposedly playful sexuality
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: crossed a much darker line, like maybe just maybe the
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: song was about a sexual assault? Listen to those lyrics.
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  Speaker 1: Had Blurred Lines been released, say, five years later during
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the height of the Me Too movement, it would never
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  Speaker 1: have ever have been on the radio, let alone go
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  Speaker 1: to number one all over the world. And then there
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: was the Marvin Gaye lawsuit. Thicke and Farrell had acknowledged
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: that they were trying to capture the feel of Marvin
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Gaye's got to give it up. Hell, they ripped off
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the riff. Eventually, the Gaye estate sued. But we'll come
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: back to that. Because things were about to get much,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: much more personal. and much uglier for Thicke. Robin Thicke
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: had been married to the beautiful actress Paula Patton since 2005.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: They'd been together for years. They had a son. And
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  Speaker 1: then came 2013, the VMAs, Miley Cyrus, the infamous twerking performance,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and then an after-party photograph surfaced showing Thicke with his
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: hand on another woman's backside. Not exactly the kind of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: thing you want your wife to see on the internet.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Then there were those allegations from Emily Ratajkowski that Thicke
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: groped those lovely bare breasts of hers during the shoot
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: for the Blurred Lines video. In February 2014, Robin Thicke
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  Speaker 1: and Paula Patton announced that they were separating. And here's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: where this story and Robin Thicke really go off the rails,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: because Thicke apparently thought, shit, My wife left me. I
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: messed up, but it's okay. I know how to fix this.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I'll make an album. Not just any album. An album
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  Speaker 1: for my wife, Paula. About Paula. Named Paula. An album
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  Speaker 1: whose basic premise was, baby, please come back. Ladies and gentlemen,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: welcome to Paula. Robin Thicke's desperate musical attempt devoted to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: getting his wife to come back to him. The album
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: was recorded incredibly quickly. Apparently, Thicke wrote the songs in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: about three weeks after finishing the Blurred Lines tour. Three weeks. Now,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently wrong with making an album quickly. Lots
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of artists have done it, and some of them have
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  Speaker 1: been quite good. But imagine the circumstances. You've just had
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the biggest hit of your career, the unofficial song of
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the summer of 2013. You're on MTV, on radio stations
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: around the world, but your marriage is falling apart. You're
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: under enormous public scrutiny. You're dealing with a massive backlash
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: over your image, and your solution is, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: make a 14-song musical apology to my estranged wife. And then,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to release it to the entire fucking world.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: This is not an apology. This isn't a handwritten letter.
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  Speaker 1: This isn't flowers. This isn't couples therapy. This is, hey, Paula,
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  Speaker 1: I made you an album. And the first single was
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: called Get Her Back. Of course it was. Now, musically,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it's not terrible. That's one of the strangest things about Paula.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: The album isn't some unlistenable catastrophe. Thick actually sounds pretty
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: good at times. The production is relatively stripped down, and
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it sounds much closer to his earlier R & B
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: work than the enormous pop production of Blurred Lines. But lyrically?
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. This is where things get uncomfortable. He's begging.
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  Speaker 1: He's apologizing. He's talking about how much he loves Paula.
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  Speaker 1: I never should have raised my voice or made you
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  Speaker 1: feel small. I never should have asked you to do
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  Speaker 1: anything at all. I should have kissed you longer. I
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  Speaker 1: should have held you stronger. And I'll wait for forever
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: for you to love me again. Jesus, man, get a grip.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And then you get songs like Black Tar Cloud. And
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: this is where I have to say, Robin, dude. Maybe don't.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Because the song contains a dramatic scene in which the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: woman he's singing about says she took 20 pills. He
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  Speaker 1: calls the ambulance. He calls the police. He's freaking out.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And then she tells him she didn't actually take the pills.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: She was essentially crying out for help. This is not subtle.
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  Speaker 1: This is not some artsy metaphor. This is a guy
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  Speaker 1: taking some deeply personal marital turmoil and putting it on
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  Speaker 1: a record for millions of strangers to hear. And then
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: there's the music video for Get Her Back. Oh boy.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: This thing is fucking fascinating. The video features a bloodied,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: crying Robin Thicke. He's looking miserable. He's begging. And throughout
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: the video, text messages supposedly between Robin and Paula appear
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: on screens. Robin's messages are apologetic. Paula's responses are considerably
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: less sympathetic. She's basically telling him that he drank too much,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: ruined everything, and embarrassed her. And then Robin essentially tells her,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I wrote a whole album about her, about you. And
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: her response? I don't care. Jesus Christ. Imagine spending three
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  Speaker 1: weeks making an entire album to win back your wife
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: and then putting her response, I don't care, in the
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: music video. That's not a music video. That's couples therapy
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: con horribly wrong. And here's another bizarre detail. Paula actually
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: appears on the album. On Living in New York City,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: you hear Paula's voice. It's essentially a recording of her
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: saying that she's moving to New York. Thicke said she
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: did it as a favor. And again, There's something incredibly
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: strange about hearing the actual voice of the woman you're
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: trying to win back appear on the album you're making
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  Speaker 1: about winning her back. It's like listening to someone's divorce
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  Speaker 1: proceedings with a bass line. Now here's where the story
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  Speaker 1: gets really interesting, like it wasn't already. Because Paula wasn't just...
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a strange artistic decision. It came at exactly the wrong
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: moment in Robin Thicke's career. Remember, this guy had just
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  Speaker 1: been one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Blurred lines had been fucking gigantic. but the public conversation
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: surrounding him had changed dramatically. And then came this album,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: an album that basically said, I'm sorry, I'm miserable, I
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: fucked up, please love me again. And there was a
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: legitimate question. Was this really about Paula? Or was this
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: also about Robin Thicke trying to rehabilitate his own public image?
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  Speaker 1: Because if you suddenly find yourself at the center of
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  Speaker 1: a massive backlash, there's an obvious temptation to say, look,
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  Speaker 1: I'm actually a sensitive guy. I'm a devoted husband. I'm sorry.
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  Speaker 1: And Paula certainly presented that image. The problem was the
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: public wasn't necessarily buying it. And then the album came
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  Speaker 1: out and nobody bought it. Well, some people bought it,
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  Speaker 1: just not many. In the United States, Paula sold about 24,000
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  Speaker 1: copies in its first week. Remember now, Blurred Lines had
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: sold 177,000 copies in its first week. That's an enormous drop,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: but wait, it gets better or worse, depending on your perspective.
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  Speaker 1: In the United Kingdom, Paula sold 530 copies. 530. That's it.
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  Speaker 1: It debuted at number 200 on the UK album chart. Now,
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  Speaker 1: for some perspective, Blurred Lines had been the UK's best-selling
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  Speaker 1: single of 2013. So Robin Thicke had gone from being
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest pop stars in Britain to selling
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  Speaker 1: 530 copies of an album without trying to get his
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  Speaker 1: wife back. In Canada, 550 copies. Australia? Well, reports at
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that time put its first week sales at only a
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: few hundred copies. This wasn't just a flop. This was
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  Speaker 1: the commercial equivalent of the fall of Saigon. Oddly enough,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the album actually debuted at number nine in the United States,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: which sounds respectable, until you realize it did that with
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: only about 24,000 copies sold. So I'm not sure what's
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  Speaker 1: going on there. And then it fell 32 places the
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  Speaker 1: following week. Oh, and remember the Marvin Gaye lawsuit I
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier? That became another chapter in the Robin Thicke
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: WTF saga. During the litigation over Blurred Lines, Thicke gave
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  Speaker 1: a deposition in which he acknowledged being drunk and high
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  Speaker 1: during much of the songwriting process and said that Pharrell
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  Speaker 1: had written most of the song. The case eventually resulted
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  Speaker 1: in a jury verdict against Thicke and Pharrell, with damages
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  Speaker 1: awarded to the gay family. So let's recap. In roughly
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: a year, Robin Thicke goes from Blurred Lines is the
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  Speaker 1: biggest song in the world to My Marriage is Falling
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  Speaker 1: Apart to making an album called Paula to win my
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  Speaker 1: wife back, to only 530 people in Britain bought it, to, oh,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm getting sued over my biggest hit. This man's
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  Speaker 1: career went through more plot twists than a fucking telenovela.
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  Speaker 1: The problem with Paula, one of the many, is that
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  Speaker 1: the album is almost impossible to separate from the circumstances
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  Speaker 1: surrounding it. Imagine if Robin Thicke had disappeared for three
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: years after Blurred Lines, worked on himself, made a great record,
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  Speaker 1: came back with some dignity. Maybe, just maybe, we'd remember
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  Speaker 1: Paula differently. Instead, he took one of the most private
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  Speaker 1: and painful situations imaginable and turned it into a 51-minute
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  Speaker 1: public spectacle. And that's the real WTF. because there is
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: something undeniably romantic about writing an album for the person
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  Speaker 1: you love. But there's a line between, I wrote this
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  Speaker 1: song because I miss you, and I have just publicly
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  Speaker 1: documented our marriage, our arguments, your voice, your rejection of me,
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  Speaker 1: and my desperate attempt to get you back, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: putting it on Spotify. That's a little intense. And ultimately,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Paula Patton did not come back to Robyn. Marriage ended,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Robin Thicke moved on, but his career didn't completely disappear.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: And this is where the story takes one final, absolutely
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  Speaker 1: bizarre turn, because it seemed that there was no chance
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  Speaker 1: of Robin Thicke topping the charts ever again, or folks
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: wanting to listen to his music. So in 2019, Fox
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: launched a new celebrity singing competition called The Masked Singer.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: The concept was simple. Take a celebrity... put them in
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  Speaker 1: an absolutely ridiculous costume, make them sing, and have a
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  Speaker 1: panel of celebrities try to figure out who's underneath the mask.
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  Speaker 1: And who was sitting on that panel when the American
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: version launched? Robin Thicke. That's right. The guy who had
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: spent 2013 as a swaggering, chart-topping playboy and then 2014
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: publicly begging his estranged wife to take him back was
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: now sitting next to Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger,
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  Speaker 1: trying to figure out whether some celebrity was hiding inside
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  Speaker 1: a fucking pineapple. And somehow it worked. Thicke became one
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  Speaker 1: of the show's longest-running panelists. So there's a strange little
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: coda to the story. Robin Thicke didn't disappear. He didn't
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: become a forgotten one-hit wonder. He just went from being
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the guy who made Blurred Lines to the guy who
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: made Paula to the guy sitting on the Masked Singer
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  Speaker 1: yelling guesses at people dressed like giant vegetables. And honestly,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty interesting career arc. Because Paula remains this
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: incredible little time capsule of one of the strangest moments
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: in modern rock history. Because you have to remember how
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: quickly it all happened. In 2013, Robin Thicke, one of
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the biggest pop stars in the world, blurred lines is everywhere.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: He's on television. He's at the VMAs. He's rich. He's famous.
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  Speaker 1: He's married to Paula Patton. He's basically living the dream.
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  Speaker 1: And then about a year later, his marriage is collapsing.
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  Speaker 1: His biggest song is embroiled in controversy and a major
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: copyright lawsuit. He's releasing an album named after his estranged wife.
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  Speaker 1: He's putting her voice on it. He's releasing a music
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  Speaker 1: video featuring their text messages, and he's begging her to
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: come back. And then Britton buys 530 copies of the album. 530.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: That's not a career downturn. That's a fucking WTF music moment.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I'm John, and I'll be back soon enough with another
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: WTF music moment.