Hannah Knorr

Popular Contemporary Music

21 July 2014

In 2013, Robin Thickes single Blurred Lines took the world by storm. It was a fairly
straightforward tribute to Marvin Gayes Got to Give it Up presenting itself as a fun-fueled
Rhythm and Blues song speaking to the good girl/bad girl trope found often in popular culture.
The track dropped on March 26, 2013 after an online video campaign that began on March 20.
The song features guest vocals by the American rapper T.I. and guest production by the
American artist/producer Pharrell Williams. The single debuted at number one on the US
Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and would eventually top the Billboard Hot 100 chart
for twelve consecutive weeks, the longest streak in both 2013 alone and in the 2010s decade. It
sold over 5 million copies in just 22 weeks in the United States, and 6 million in 29 weeks, faster
than any other song in digital history. Overall, it would become the most best-selling digital
single of 2013 and the second best-selling digital single of all time. Indeed, for better or worse it
was impossible to listen to mainstream radio or even watch American television in 2013 without
having Robin Thicke and Blurred Lines shoved into your earholes.
Looking at the song itself, Blurred Lines is a Rhythm and Blues song written in versechorus form, the most pervasive song form among popular music. Robin Thicke performs the
main vocal parts with back-up vocals from Pharrell Williams and a rapped verse from T.I. Robin
and Williams collaborated directly to write and produce this song although all three singers share
the official writing credits. Williams is known for basing his songs on previous music hits, a
practice that can be viewed as derivative at best and plagiarism at worst. Here, Thick and
Williams wanted to produce a contemporary version of Marvin Gayes Got to Give it Up song.
The feeling of Gayes original song is replicated using heavily syncopated cowbell-like
percussion along with the straighter bass beat in the background. The call and response between
the singers harkens to very traditional R&B style as well as give the song a very casual,

improvised feeling. Thicke and Williams have gone on record saying the song took around a half
hour to roughly track out, a testament to how technology allows us instant gratification using
synthesized instruments over actually bringing in a recording band. At first glance, it seems to
be your standard R&B fair, but the overall groove can also be linked to disco and funk
influences. The singles topped the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hip chart originally, but it quickly found
its place among the Hot 100 chart, a chart that usually contains more songs from the pop genre.
In doing this, an R&B song came to define pop music for three straight months, an event not so
commonly seen when combining all genres into one chart like the Hot 100 does. So, how exactly
did Blurred Lines, a single from an artist who had proved thus far to be a mass market failure,
become the song of 2013?
In short, Robin Thickes Blurred Lines became a popular culture success due to a smart
marketing team and a savvy use of social media technology. Thickes team knew this song
would never survive solely on radio exposure alone. Even with the crossover appeal from hiphop/rap artists T.I. and Pharrell, Thicke himself was simply not a big enough name in the
industry to sell his single alone. Until this song, Thickes music had never reached higher than
number seventeen on the Billboard charts. He was not a prominent name among mass markets.
In fact, most of his reputation just came from being the son of Alan Thicke, a popular CanadianAmerican actor. So, his marketing team knew they had to go big or go home on Blurred Lines.
They decided to utilize social media to build hype for the single before it was even released to
the public. The music video for the single was released March 20, almost a whole week before
Thickes new record on the same name would be available for download/purchase to the general
public. The video itself was crafted to create controversy, containing what many considered
misogynistic images that speak to bestiality, drug culture, and the use of women as erotic silent

props. In fact, two different versions of the video were released, with one containing the models
topless and wearing only nude colored G-string underwear as attire. In front of these images,
flashes of words reading #THICKE and #BLURREDLINES are often seen. These phrases
are now known in popular culture as hashtags and involve using shared tags to connect people
all over the world under a single topic. This practice began on Twitter, a social media site where
users tweet brief messages or other media (pictures/videos/web links/etc.) to their followers.
Tags that gain a lot of web traffic by being tweeted by many different users reach a status known
as trending. In a way, this is a way to track popular culture in real time. Even if the topic only
trends for a short amount of time, a message has been put out across the web that it is popular
and our peer pressure-minded population will want to look into it. This is how popular culture is
established: a mass media producer releases something to its consumers, the consumers either
reject or accept the new information, accepted information become part of pop culture, and it
circles around as feedback to tell the media what should be released next. By giving consumers a
way to communicate their thoughts under #THICKE and #BLURREDLINES, Thickes camp
guaranteed that any publicity, positive or negative, would bring buzz to the new single and
therefore bring in new viewers. After all, everyone loves a good controversy.
In part, it would be the music video imagery that would begin the controversy that would
come to surround an otherwise flighty R&B turned faux pop song. In this era of political
correctness, calling out misogyny has become a reflex flag to wave. This is especially true when
it comes to popular culture and the media. Women have historically been used as a simple sex
sells strategy. However, girl power anthems from artists such as Pink and Rhianna have brought
forth an image of the powerful sexy woman. She is confident, taking control of her sex life and is
totally unapologetic about it. This has attempted to circumvent the good girl/bad girl duality that

became popular with hyper-sexualized female pop singers who relied more on notoriety than
musical talent for pop culture success. A major fault in the good girl gone bad trope is that she
undertakes this transformation with the intention of gaining control in her life yet usually she still
plays into the hands of men. Men like bad girls because they are sexy and promiscuous, and in
this way female sexuality was largely controlled by men for a long time under an institution
known either as the patriarchy or rape culture depending how strongly you feel on the subject.
When the Blurred Lines video was filmed, the director, Diane Martel, intended to poke fun at
this trope showing men openly desiring women who did not openly reject or accept them, but
rather stared often at the camera as if teasing the audience to acknowledge how ridiculous it is to
believe sex on its own, even when mired down in barnyard imagery and silly white guy dancing,
sells. Unfortunately, she may have chosen the wrong song to use to do this. The real problem lied
in the lyrical content of the song.
Even after the video release, the biggest controversy from Blurred Lines would come
from its lyrical content. The most prominent line of the song involves Thicke telling a woman I
know you want it, a line most often associated with rape culture, implying that no from a
woman does not always mean no. The song goes on to tell the woman he is implicitly trying to
pick up that shes an animal and should not be held back by a man who wants to domesticate her,
bringing forth the image of a long-term boyfriend or husband. In fact, he will liberate her,
apparently through quick anonymous sex. This is where the concept of blurred lines enters.
Thicke argues that the blurred lines he speaks of are about the decision of a good girl to go
bad. He implies that all good girls want to go bad and he wishes to be the means by which they
choose to do so, and even more dangerous idea at play here being that it is only through men a
woman can reclaim her sexuality and that a womans worth lies in her sexual accessibility to

men. However, a lot of feminist factions have argued that blurred lines speak to issues of consent
rampant in rape culture. This argument gains ground as Thicke sings about drug usage,
specifically marijuana as implied by him getting it from Jamaica. This is the final verse, and by
the end of it, Thicke declares there is no more pretending, and the woman is now winning
hence this being their beginning. It seems as if Thicke has gotten the woman to smoke pot with
him and now she feels comfortable even to have sex with him. He argues she wins in this
decision as now their story together can begin and she has officially embraced being a bad girl
by using drugs and sex; however, consent while under the influence is a touchy cultural topic and
having sex while under the influence of drugs is known as grey rape in that explicit consent is
not as easily defined. With as many feminist movements that have become prominent in popular
culture, e.g. the #YesAllWomen social media campaign, a song like Blurred Lines is destined
to start controversy. However, as the sales figures proves, no publicity is bad publicity, and by
directly opposing his detractors, Thicke was able to convince the mass media that his song was
just a simple silly club anthem he wrote for his wife.
In all, Blurred Lines ruled 2013 by a smart progression of marketing and social media
claims that would ensure exposure to as many markets as possible. Love it or hate it, everyone
knew this song in song way, shape, or form, and thats really all popular culture is about. Thicke
and Williams proved themselves if nothing else technology and culture savvy through the
utilization of synthesized music and social media. Technology will always be a deciding factor in
popular music simply because technology has become so pervasive in our culture in general. We
are expected to spend as much time connected as possible in a world of faux socialization and
instant consumption of news/music/media/everything. The Internet is where the battle for the
best takes place now, not the radio. Less and less people look to the radio for the next big trend

as it takes too much time to see what is truly popular through this medium. Also, technology has
streamlined music creation to a point many would call it bastardized. Electronic music has
become a genre in its own right and synthesized music, be it pre-created beat loops or entire
compositions, is everywhere. It is not necessary, but it is easier and cheaper, both of which are
huge selling points in the highly commercialized business world that the music industry has
become. In the future, this attitude will always be prevalent among the biggest production
companies. Where technology goes, so will music. Last week, I was told about the demonstration
of a system with so little latency, live music could be broadcast instantaneously despite the
performers being halfway across the world from one another. As cool as it sounds and as many
avenues for collaboration as it may open, I cannot help but wonder if this will become a new
trend in live music. Perhaps instead of going on entire tours, bands will only need to perform
at one location and broadcast it out to hundreds of places at once. The novelty may kill the
sincerity of genuinely live music, and I for one do not wish to watch it go down that way.