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Blurred Lines: 58 @ Metacritic
70 Slant Magazine Original Score: 3.5/5 Jul 23, 2013
For all the narcissistic come-ons on his sixth album, Blurred Lines, it's hard to figure out what exactly Thicke has to offer in the current R&B landscape. Timberlake continues to milk a nearly identical timbre to far greater effect, Usher and Miguel can sing circles around him, and artists as varied as Frank Ocean and The-Dream are taking R&B into ever-loopier territory. Even on the earworm of a title track, the singer's efforts, including a new-and-improved mix of airy head voice and lascivious low register, feel like an afterthought amid Pharrell's insistently clinking production.
60 PopMatters Original Score: 6/10 Jul 29, 2013
It’s gleaming, fast-paced, sugar-coated. Of course, Thicke is not the only falsetto-wielding white pop star climbing the stairway up the charts, and at times he sounds a lot like a competitor, Justin Timberlake. (Their occasional sonic similarity does not extend to their looks, though in a recent New York Times profile of the singer, teenagers did ask Thicke if he was Timberlake.) Pick your Timberlake-like moment on Blurred Lines—the vocals on “Oooh La La” or “Ain’t No Hat 4 That,” the beat to “Give It 2 U,” which owes much to JT’s “SexyBack.” In the second half of the album, Thicke largely drops the funk, instead bringing in club-centric electronics and inserting a few ballads for old time’s sake, with disappointing results. The clubby synths are an unimaginative concession to the current state of pop, since that first-half funk was plenty danceable and significantly less clunky. The ballads feel tacked on, especially since they only show up at the end, and they lack the pull of classic early Thicke (“Lost Without You”).
58 Entertainment Weekly Original Score: C+ Jul 24, 2013
The problem's not merely that Thicke has doused himself in too-strong cologne. It's how predictably it all fits with his frictionless boutique-lounge grooves — a sound we liked better this year coming from Justin Timberlake's ''Suit & Tie'' (which ''Blurred Lines'' followed onto the charts). This may be Robin Thicke's perfect moment. That moment just happens to be perfectly boring.
50 Chicago Tribune Original Score: 2/4 Jul 29, 2013
It’s an album that discourages sitting still. Too bad the icky lyrics ruin the mood.
40 The Independent Original Score: 2/5 Jul 22, 2013
Thicke's wheedling tone and sylvan falsetto are engaging enough on this sixth album, though his clumsily backhanded way with a compliment (“You're far from plastic” – gee, thanks!) deteriorates as the album proceeds, from the simply tasteless to gross, predatory boasts about having “a big dick for ya” on “Give It 2 U”. Musically it's too predictable to make much of an impression, apart from the retro-disco-funk groove of “Ain't No Hat 4 That”, which recalls the slick heyday of Earth, Wind & Fire.
40 The Guardian Original Score: 2/5 Jul 22, 2013
Whether it's "rapey" is debatable, but Thicke certainly doesn't do himself many favours elsewhere on the album. The music is sunny funk/soul, there are seamless cameos from Pharrell and Kendrick Lamar, and Thicke proves a loose-limbed loverman of a vocalist – but the positive qualities are overshadowed by his blunt-instrument romantic technique. He regularly divests himself of dignity, claiming on Give It 2 U that he's "got a little Thicke for you, big dick for you", offering on Take It Easy on Me to "rip through all your fancy clothes" to "get a shot of your underwear" and so on. Shame: this could have been a pretty good album.
40 The Observer Original Score: 2/5 Jul 22, 2013
Some people make music to communicate the stirrings of their soul. Robin Thicke makes music to communicate to you the size of his penis. I'm not being figurative: on the charmless Give it 2 U he promises his lady friend "a big dick for you" and then there's the uncensored video for the fastest-selling single of the year, Blurred Lines, that features G-stringed women dancing past the words "Robin Thicke has a big dick". Some of these tunes are passable party pabulum but Thicke is such a total tool that it gets in the way of any fun.
20 The Independent on Sunday Original Score: 1/5 Jul 22, 2013
Thicke has racked up five Billboard hit albums without troubling the outside world. Suddenly, following the global smash “Blurred Lines”, all eyes are on him for the sixth. Which turns out to be an almost fascinatingly charmless collection of bog-standard sub-Timberlake nu-disco and R&B-pop, with would-be loverman Thicke promising a “big dick for you” and complaining that there’s no statue of him in his hometown. Nothing to see here.
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