Robin Thicke admitted that everything he’s said about “Blurred Lines” in media interviews isn’t necessarily true, explaining in a court deposition obtained by The Hollywood Reporter that he lies to sell records.
“With all due respect, I was drunk and high every time I did an interview last year,” Thicke said in a deposition taken April 23. Thicke and producer Pharrell are in the middle of a legal battle with Marvin Gaye’s family over the originality of “Blurred Lines.” Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. are suing the Gaye children — who claim the song rips off their father’s “Got To Give It Up” — to ensure credit for the song goes to them.
But when it comes to credit, Thicke — who says he gets an estimated 20 percent of royalties — says the song belongs to Pharrell, who was very “generous” in allowing people to believe Thicke co-wrote the song. According to Thicke, he had nothing to do with the song’s production.
Q: Were you present during the creation of “Blurred Lines”?
Thicke: I was present. Obviously, I sang it. I had to be there.
Q: When the rhythm track was being created, were you there with Pharrell?
Thicke: 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.
As for Pharrell, he claims that artists often get a larger chunk of the royalties to make it look appear as if they co-wrote the song — or that the idea for a song was their own. “This is what happens every day in our industry,” Williams said in his own deposition. “You know, people are made to look like they have much more authorship in the situation than they actually do. So that’s where the embellishment comes in.”
“I wish I could take credit for it,” Thicke said about the song, adding that his then-unreleased Paula is all him. “But my new album’s great. Wait till you hear that one.”
Along with pushing all the credit to Pharrell, Thicke claims he either doesn’t recall saying he was inspired by Marvin Gaye because he was high, or that he embellished his love for the legendary soul singer. In the deposition, his interviewer asks him about this particular quote in GQ from May 2013:
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.
To this, Thicke responds in his deposition:
“I lied in my story so I could at least make it seem like, ‘Hey, I’m the guy who came up with this great idea,’ ” he insisted. “And you know what? I didn’t even use the Marvin Gaye thing until everyone started saying to me, ‘Hey, it’s reminiscent of the Marvin Gaye song.’ And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, that was my idea. I wanted to do something like that.’ ”
Emilee Lindner
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