Why blurred lines is bad

As for Marvin Gaye — nothing wrong with copying genius if you do it right. He packs in all these cutesy do-I-make-you-proud details. This is just math, Robin Thicke!

The way Cat hums along with the piano solo — that is some virtuoso sucking. You have to earn it. And wow, Robin was willing to put in the work. Greil Marcus wrote a classic Interview column in about the difference between hating the Stone Temple Pilots and hating the Spin Doctors.

But when it dropped off the radio, it dropped out of my heart. Damn, I hated this song. Why would you be looking for it if you could see it? What happened to us, Vanessa? Where did our hate go? But one thing is for sure. Everything next year will just have to suck a little harder. Some of the rhetoric may be blunt, but nothing is blunter than a ban. Haigh defends EUSA's decision on multiple grounds.

It's also about protecting [rape] victims and making them feel safe so they don't have to listen to a song that reminds them of horrific experiences. And it starts a public discussion. Nothing changes overnight, but it's about slowly and surely changing the culture.

I think they're getting into muddy waters. It's worrying that young people seem to see censorship as a solution to complex societal issues. He also has doubts about the efficacy of age-rating music videos. Second, I'm not sure that ratings really address the core issues of racism and sexism. Yet however imperfect the debate triggered by Blurred Lines may be, many women are justifiably unsettled by pop's inability to outgrow its crassest tropes. New US chart rules, which count YouTube views as well as sales, provide an enhanced incentive to produce attention-grabbing videos, creating a kind of outrage arms race.

What you do and say with it has a lot of weight. There are a lot of shock tactics these days: people trying to outdo each other, which will probably culminate in two people fucking on stage at the Grammys.

The question is whether or not the music industry has any reason to change when controversy has done nothing to blunt the sales of Thicke or Cyrus, and has probably been beneficial. It seems like a domino effect: response after response after response, and that's helping the song do well and make even more people aware of it.

I don't think it will change anything. If anything, it will make the actions more outrageous so more people talk about them. Latchford is more optimistic. We hope that because it's coming from young women who are supposed to be consumers of this stuff, that will drive change.

It's more likely, and more desirable, that tangible change will be driven organically by formidable artists rather than chastened executives. They have so much charisma and dynamism that they are riveting without having to strip down. Admittedly, they aren't yet household names, but it is only a matter of time before a truly unorthodox star emerges.

If pop music has created a problem, then only pop music can solve it. Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade.

Another student union has banned Robin Thicke's party track. How did it become such a lightning rod for moral outrage and censorship? The rapper told the magazine he was "embarrassed" by some of his old songs which he would not write today, saying it "took a lot of time and growth" to come to that realisation. Jadey O'Regan, a lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the University of Sydney, said Williams' comments were positive but that the artist should have known better.

Williams had previously defended criticism of Blurred Lines, telling Pitchfork the message had been "misconstrued" in an interview in But in , he told culture website WWD the song would not have a place in today's world. Dr O'Regan pointed out that, while Williams has now condemned the song, he still benefited from it financially. Dr O'Regan said it was easy to be cynical about artists in the wake of the MeToo movement, which brought a heightened awareness of exploitation and inequality in the entertainment industry.

But she hopes that someone like Williams coming out and criticising his own work is indicative of real change in the industry. When Blurred Lines was first released, there was criticism that the lyrics perpetuated rape culture and was triggering to women who had experienced sexual assault.

For some, lyrics such as "I know you want it" trivialised the disconnect between a woman's appearance and behaviour and a man interpreting it as consent for sex. In a piece for culture website The Daily Beast , Tricia Romano described the song as "kind of rapey". However, others defended the song, such as Jennifer Lai, who wrote about the song in a piece for Slate in Thicke told GQ in that the whole idea of the music video was to do something taboo. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman.

I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women'. In an interview with Complex in , the most prominent model in the song's film clip, Emily Ratajkowski, said she thought the lyrics were "playful" and "self-aware". An "unrated" version of the clip, featuring Ratajkowski and other women topless, was taken off YouTube after complaints about nudity.

Users can still view the clip on YouTube today, however, after signing in to verify their age.