Although it stands as one of the biggest hits of Pharrell Williams’s career, Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” remains a flashpoint of controversy on multiple fronts. In addition to the multi-million dollar lawsuit the two artists lost against the estate of Marvin Gaye, “Blurred Lines” is often criticized for its coercive and “rapey” lyrics. In a new interview with GQ, Pharrell opened up about being embarrassed by some of his old material and explained how “Blurred Lines” (which he co-wrote with Thicke) helped to change his thinking around his own lyrical content.
“Some of my old songs, I would never write or sing today. I get embarrassed by some of that stuff. It just took a lot of time and growth to get to that place,” he said. “I think ‘Blurred Lines’ opened me up. I didn’t get it at first… When there started to be an issue with it, lyrically, I was, like, ‘What are you talking about? There are women who really like the song and connect to the energy that just gets you up.’ And ‘I know you want it'—women sing those kinds of lyrics all the time. So it’s like, 'What’s rapey about that?’”
He’s referencing the song’s chorus, where Thicke repeatedly sings:
Good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
Pharrell explained that eventually it dawned on him that it wasn’t the intent behind his lyrics that mattered:
I realized that there are men who use that same language when taking advantage of a woman, and it doesn’t matter that that’s not my behavior. Or the way I think about things. It just matters how it affects women. And I was like, ‘Got it. I get it. Cool.’ My mind opened up to what was actually being said in the song and how it could make someone feel. Even though it wasn’t the majority, it didn’t matter. I cared what they were feeling too. I realized that we live in a chauvinist culture in our country. Hadn’t realized that. Didn’t realize that some of my songs catered to that. So that blew my mind.
This response represents a change for Pharrell, who defended the track in a 2014 interview with The Independent.
“I’d never want to say anything about sex. Like, ‘rape-y’ would mean, ‘I’m gonna do this to you, you know you want me to do that to you…’” he said at the time. “You have to make sure that you’re coming from a decent place. And I was coming from a decent place. Because when you look at the song in totality you realize that the song’s about a woman who wanted to… who felt something, but decided to take it out on the dance floor.”
Despite criticism about the lyrics and the industry-altering copyright battle around the song, “Blurred Lines” is a massive record. The song is certified Diamond, denoting 10 million sales in the US, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It’s one of four No. 1 hits for Pharrell as a lead or featured artist, and came less than a year before the release of his next global smash hit, “Happy.”
As Pharrell explained to GQ, that song showed him how his lyrics can affect people in a very different way.
“The universe set up the perfect conditions to get me to write a song like [‘Happy.’] That made me cry,” he said. “Like, I was on the Oprah show for my birthday, and she showed me a video of people around the world singing that song, and that shit fucked me up. Bad. I was never the same. So I don’t beat on my chest. I haven’t been the same since any of that music.”
Check out Pharrell’s full GQ interview here and catch up on all the lyrics to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” on Genius now.
