in brief: robin thicke defends controversial ‘blurred lines’

Robin Thicke has defended his much-criticised hit, ‘Blurred Lines’, in an interview with BBC Radio 1 on Wednesday. He claimed, among other things, that the lyrics are anything but misogynistic, and could even be empowering to women.

‘For me, [the lyrics are] about blurring the lines between two things. One, men and women and how much we’re the same. My wife is as smart as I am – if not smarter, stronger, and she’s an animal too. She doesn’t need a man to define her or her existence,’ he said.

‘The other side is the blurred lines between a good girl and a bad girl. Even very good girls have a bad side to them.’

He revealed that he was originally against the “sexy” uncensored version of the video – which has been pulled from YouTube – and that it was actually his wife who coaxed him into releasing it.

He said of the video:

‘It was actually the director’s idea, Diane Martel. I had mentioned to her that I wanted to do a very funny and silly video, something like Benny Hill even is what I mentioned. And she said, “Well, what if we have the girls take their clothes off?” And I said, “Well, let’s make sure we shoot two versions” ’cause I don’t want it to be sleazy – I’ve always been a gentleman, I’ve been in love with the same woman since I was a teenager, so I don’t want to do anything that’s inappropriate.’

‘When I saw the video back, my original response was “I love the clothed version; I don’t think we should put out the naked version.” And then I showed it to my wife and all of her girlfriends, and they said, “You have to put this out. This is so sexy and so cool.”’

He said claims made by Rape Crisis spokesperson, Katie Russell, that the lyrics ‘glamourise violence against women’ and ‘reinforce rape myths’ are ‘ridiculous’ and refused to ‘dignify [them] with a response’.

Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines is sitting comfortably in the charts – it’s currently at number 2 in the ARIA Singles Chart and number 1 Billboard’s Hot 100.