Remember when Robin Thicke couldn’t get through a show without begging his now-ex-wife Paula Patton to take him back? He does, too — and he feels just as awkward about it as everyone else did at the time.
The singer, 38, recently gave an interview to the New York Times in which he spoke about his struggles over the last couple of years, including the trial over his hit song “Blurred Lines” — during which a jury decided that the tune infringed on the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” — and his split from his childhood sweetheart.
Asked whether he was still “drinking and taking pills,” a reference to something he’d said in his deposition for the trial, the world-famous crooner told the Times he’d cleaned up his act — in more ways than one.
“There’s a thing that Marcel Proust referred to as supersaturation. When the past, present, and future all become very clear and high-definition and surround-sound in one moment,” he explained. “My supersaturation came right after I performed on the BET Awards [in June 2014]. I dedicated the performance [of the song ‘Forever Love’] to my ex.”
Thicke and Patton, who share son Julian, 5, had split four months before the BETs that year amid numerous reports of his alleged infidelity and hard partying. He dedicated several performances to her leading up to the event, and then made an emotional (and very public) apology onstage at L.A.’s Nokia Theatre. He also named his album after her, but it was a commercial flop and sold just 24,000 copies in its first week, according to Billboard — a steep fall from the success of 2013’s Blurred Lines.
“I came home, and my best friend of 20 years, Craig Crawford, said, ‘I saw your BET performance,'” the star recalled in his interview with the Times. “And I said: ‘Oh yeah! What did you think?’ You know — excited. And he goes: ‘I gotta be honest with you, buddy. You’re kind of playing yourself. You look like a sucker.'”
Hearing that from someone so close to him shocked him into reality. “And it hit me that I’d lost my perspective. What I thought was romantic was just embarrassing,” Thicke shared. “And he said, ‘You should just go away for a while.’ So I shut everything down. I took some time off to be with my son, and to be with my family and close friends. And the more time I took off, the more everything became clear.”
That said, the “Get Her Back” singer makes no apologies for taking inspiration from his personal life for his music.
“Look, my songwriting has always been autobiographical, and always will be,” he reasoned. “The Paula album was no different. I was struggling through my toughest time, and I decided to share it. And I remember my team and my record company didn’t want me to put it out, but they stuck by me. In hindsight, the only thing I would have done differently was, I wouldn’t have promoted it or sold it. I would have given it away. That would have kept the purity of the message intact.”
