What can very possibly be called the song of the summer (at least to Stephen Colbert, anyway) almost wasn’t a released song in general. Blurred Lines, the song that’s consistently requested on the radio, the same song that’s been #1 on Billboard’s Top 100 for 9 weeks in a row, wasn’t taken to well by singer Robin Thicke‘s record label, Universal Music’s Interscope Records.
The record label wouldn’t pay for the song’s music video, which is now one of the more well-known videos on the play circuit. Instead, both versions of the Blurred Lines video (read: clothed and nude versions) were paid for by Remy Martin.
Thicke recently had an interview with the Associated Press (which has since been republished via Huffington Post) about his success and what it took to get to be #1.
“I went to the record label and I played it for the heads of the label, head of pop radio… and everybody just went “nice. nice.” Got no response; was kind of surprised by that,” Thicke stated, but that didn’t stop him from pushing forward with the song that would not too far off become #1. A few months later went back in, played it again like, “I think we have enough records here. I think we’ve got four or five really strong singles’ – or at least four or five options for singles.”
His success in different markets, he realizes, definitely didn’t hurt the song’s wild success, either. “Rarely do you have a song playing on all pop stations and all black stations, all of the urban stations” Thicke comments, but transcending all the stations is exactly what the song has done over the past few months.
And while there has been backlash, particularly from feminist groups, about the interpretations of the song, nobody can deny the success the song has had. Even Trey Anastasio said that this song would be one of his dream covers for Phish in a recent interview. The next time you hear it on the radio, just remember the record label almost didn’t put it through…
Read the Huffington Post article (complete with the interview) here.
Video (NSFW):