Blurred Lines

The first single from Robin Thicke's sixth studio album features guest appearances from hip-hop recording artists T.I. and Pharrell Williams. When Thicke went into the studio with Pharrell in the summer of 2012, he just wanted to create a track that embodied the fun vibe of his favorite song of all-time, Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up." Within an hour, the duo had come up with this song. "In the studio, Pharrell and I started jamming," Thicke recalled to Radio.com. "One of the first things Pharrell did was go, 'Hey, hey, hey!' and then we started having such a great time. We were dancing around the studio like old men. We were doing our old men barbecue dances." The song was released on March 26, 2013.

The song's music video was directed by Diane Martel, and features Thicke, Williams and T.I., joining a handful of nude models. The singer said in an interview with The Associated Press that he had received the support of his wife, actress Paula Patton, to shoot with undressed glamorous girls. However the clip was too hot for YouTube and was banned from the website. A second version was also filmed, which can still be found on YouTube, where the models appear clothed. Martel enlisted an all-female crew to shoot with her, to guarantee that the models were comfortable with the nude version. The director told MTV News, "It was really annoying to have to do two videos in one day. The plastic clothes were so uncomfortable and the girls had to keep putting them off and on and it was exhausting. This was the pain for all of us."

A basic pop song structure is verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus (A/B/A/B/C/B). This song takes a different path, going verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus (A/B/A/B/A/B/C/A/B) over its 4:23 running length. That's four verses and four repetitions of the chorus - good luck getting that out of your head. The only way to pull off this structure is to employ multiple voices, which is where the guest singers come in handy.