Throughout working with Robin, he has been fantastic. There were 100 different versions of 'Blurred Lines', mostly different edits, different endings, changes to the vocals, and so on. "We started mixing last Christmas, and it was a long process. Maserati mixed 14 songs for the album, "seven of which got on the record,” he says. Its follow-up Blurred Lines is the singer's sixth album, and his fifth on the Star Trak label founded by Pharrell and Chad Hugo, aka the Neptunes. From Mirrorball Studios, his private facility in Los Angeles, he notes that he has worked with Thicke before, having mixed all 17 tracks on 2011's Love After War. Partly responsible for the addictive, silken sound of 'Blurred Lines' is mix engineer Tony Maserati. Behind that is Maserati's Avid D-Command control surface, and behind that are visible his Neve Melbourne and Chandler Mini Mixer analogue mixers. The gear rack in the foreground includes many favourite outboard dynamics processors: Alan Smart C2, Universal Audio 1176, Chandler EMI TG Limiter, Neve 33609, 2x Urei LA3A and Chandler Zener Limiter. Though he has relocated to the LA headquarters of his own Mirrorball Entertainment, Tony Maserati maintains the same hybrid analogue/digital setup that he has used for many years.
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The entire arrangement consists of only drums, percussion, bass and Fender Rhodes piano, plus the voices of Thicke, Pharrell and TI, and the mix is remarkably smooth and transparent. 'Blurred Lines' is an earworm-inducing masterpiece of commercial pop songwriting, aided by a production of staggering simplicity. Many feel that Thicke overstepped a line, blurred or not, and it remains to be seen how this will affect his image and career in the long term.Ĭontroversial video and crude lyrics aside, there's been no argument over the appeal of the song itself. Clearly no more Mr Nice Guy for Thicke, who acknowledged in an interview that they "tried to do everything that was taboo”.
The fact that the lyrics contain lines like "I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two,” added to the controversy. It has been called "eye-poppingly misogynist”, "horrible, misogynist bullshit”, "incredibly sexist” and so on. The unrated version of the video has three models prancing about dressed only in skin-coloured G-strings, contrasting with a fully dressed Thicke, Pharrell and rapper TI. Realising that there's no such thing as bad publicity and that there's nothing as attention-grabbing as nudity and a bit of controversy, Thicke and his team went for the jugular. The song is undoubtedly ultra-catchy, but a major contributor to its success is clearly the accompanying video. Thirty-five years later Thicke, with help from long-term collaborator and producer Pharrell Williams, reinvented the song, and the result was the biggest summer hit of 2013, outdoing even Daft Punk's monster hit 'Get Lucky' - which, by a strange coincidence, also features Pharrell, who appears to be everywhere at the moment.Īt the time of writing, Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' had sold well over a million copies worldwide, and reached the number one spot in at least 14 countries, including the UK and the US. In 1977, Motown pushed Gaye to write a commercial song for a single, and his response was 'Got To Give It Up', which went on to become Gaye's third American number one. What do you do when you're an artist and songwriter wanting to break through to a larger audience, after 10 years of moderate success with mostly harmless soul and R&B music and a cuddly image that strongly appeals to women? From a musical perspective, Robin Thicke's answer was to take his cue from his biggest hero, Marvin Gaye. A simple song and an outrageous video turned Robin Thicke from a star to a superstar - with the aid of master mixer Tony Maserati.