YMMV / Robin Thicke

• Condemned by History: Robin Thicke was immensely popular in the early half of the The New '10s. His Intercourse with You song "Blurred Lines", despite gaining negative reviews from critics and having its video taken down by YouTube for sexual imagery, spent 12 weeks at the top of the Hot 100 and topped the charts of 25 countries, alongside a controversially suggestive performance with Miley Cyrus at the VMAs that year. Thicke's popularity worked because of a carefully-constructed image of a Rule-Abiding Rebel — he played the part of a lecherous womanizer, but got a pass because he was married to actress Paula Patton. However, "Blurred Lines" began attracting criticism for its lyrical content. Firstly, a popular Tumblr post featuring rape survivors holding up cards with their rapists' quotes on them that echoed the song's lyrics, in addition to Thicke and collaborator Pharrell Williams losing a lawsuit filed by the Marvin Gaye estate for allegedly copying Gaye's "Got to Give It Up". Moreover, stories began to emerge that Thicke's persona wasn't all an act — Patton filed for divorce in 2014, accusing him of domestic violence and infidelity, and Emily Ratajkowski in 2021 alleged that Thicke groped her during the filming of the "Blurred Lines" music video. Thicke's follow-up album Paula, made as an attempt to win Patton back, bombed with only 24,000 copies sold in the US in its first week and a mixed critical reception. Thicke's collaboration with Flo Rida in "I Don't Like It, I Love It" fell short of the Top 40. Comparing that to Rida's other two singles from the My House EP, which had no problems reaching the Top 10, it's easy to see why "I Don't Like It" failed to be a hit. Now, Thicke is seen as a quintessential One-Hit Wonder to most of the general public, and while he has since found success as a judge on The Masked Singer, his music career remains dead in the water. The #MeToo movement in the late 2010s onward amplified criticisms of the perceived objectification of women and trivialization of sexual harassment in "Blurred Lines". To gauge how low "Blurred Lines"'s reputation has fallen, Rolling Stone named it #50 in its list of the top 100 best songs of 2013, but less than a decade later in 2022, named it one of the worst songs ever made.
• Fetish Retardant: "Blurred Lines", despite blatantly being an Intercourse with You anthem, is this for those who are unable to get past the rape overtones of the lyrics. In Todd in the Shadows' review of the song, he also points out that the "unrated" version of the music video is significantly less sexy than the regular version, despite featuring full-on topless women (as opposed to Stripperiffic yet still covering outfits): if you show scantily-clad ladies, the viewer can imagine that eventually, they'll take that outfit off and sex will happen, but if they're already naked and nothing is happening (as the girls in the video are mostly just standing around looking bored), something must have gone wrong at some point.
• Nightmare Fuel: The music video for "Get Her Back" is nothing but mean text messages from his ex-wife, flashing images of Thicke crying, screaming, beating himself & drowning in water, masked women and this◊.
  • This video was directed by Jonas Akerlund who directed Madonna's "Ray of Light" music video, by the way.
• Older Than They Think: To the general public, Thicke is strongly associated with the year 2013 as that's when "Blurred Lines" was a hit, but he's actually worked the music industry since the 90s and released his first album in 2002.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • When people talk about Thicke anymore, it's usually in the context of either the abuse allegations made towards him by his ex-wife Paula Patton (not to mention Emily Ratajkowski's claims of Thicke sexually harassing her), or his song "Blurred Lines," due to the many accusations it received of plagiarizing Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" and the lyrics being perceived as promoting date rape.
  • The album Paula had more controversy than sales, to put it mildly. Much of the buzz surrounding the album was that it was devoted to Paula Patton, whom he was having a very public breakup with, and given his nosediving reputation, it was easy to view it as an also very public attempt to woo her back. Critics tore into it, with The Atlantic going so far as to call it "one of the creepiest albums ever made." In fact, the resulting lack of interest in Paula wound up part of that controversy - it sold 24,000 copies in America, but got humiliating triple-digit sales figures in overseas markets including an unbelievable 158 copies sold in Australia, reducing the most controversial pop star of the previous year to a pariah and a has-been.
• Signature Song: "Blurred Lines" was a massive #1 hit in 2013 and was inevitable no matter where you went.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Blurred Lines" was subjected to a major lawsuit from the estate of Marvin Gaye, because of similarities to "Got to Give It Up".

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