Blurred lines, indeed! Robin Thicke admitted during a deposition in April 2014, in defense against a lawsuit filed by Marvin Gaye's family, that he lied to the media and was high during the recording of "Blurred Lines."
In the transcript of the deposition, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Thicke sounds off against Gaye's children, who accuse Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I. of plagiarizing Gaye's 1977 classic, "Got to Give It Up."
According to the transcript, the singer was extremely hostile, saying "it's like nails on a f–king chalkboard," when Richard Busch, the Gaye family's attorney, attempted to play a mash-up of the two songs. Things got even more odd when Thicke, presented with quotes he had given to outlets like GQ magazine about how Gaye had inspired him, admitted it was actually Pharrell who wrote the song. "I was jealous and I wanted some of the credit," Thicke said under oath. "I tried to take credit for it later because [Williams] wrote the whole thing pretty much by himself and I was envious of that."
When asked if he was present while Pharrell was making the "rhythm track," Thicke said: "To be honest, that's the only part where — I was high on Vicodin and alcohol when I showed up at the studio. So my recollection is when we made the song, I thought I wanted…to be more involved than I actually was by the time, nine months later, it became a huge hit and I wanted credit. So I started kind of convincing myself that I was a little more part of it than I was …I wanted some credit for this big hit. But the reality is, is that Pharrell had the beat and he wrote almost every single part of the song."
Thicke also admitted during the deposition that he was under the influence of drugs while doing press for the controversial jam in 2013. "I didn't do a single interview last year without being high," he said, per the transcript.
(In the deposition, the 37-year-old said he’d given up Vicodin, but not alcohol.)
Now that the transcript has been released, Thicke is facing scrutiny, which a source close to the singer tells Us Weekly is all part of the Gaye estate's strategy. "This is a desperate attempt by the attorneys for the Gaye estate … they’re trying to embarrass Robin by using his honesty against him," an insider says of the situation. "At around the same time as the deposition, Robin recorded a famously confessional album and gave a select handful of interviews where he was humble and honest about his failures, the ways he had been less than honest and how his success came at a great price. This whole ordeal is an enormous price to pay for being honest under oath in the deposition."
“Robin's moment of personal vulnerability is being exploited in the hope of diverting attention from the obvious weakness of their legal claim," Howard King, attorney, managing partner of King, Holmes, Paterno & Berliner, told Us on behalf of Thicke.
