We first met Robin Thicke about a decade ago, zipping through the streets of Manhattan on a bicycle in his debut video, Jesus mane flowing behind him, then doing some sub-“Saturday Night Fever” moves in a freight elevator. The song was “When I Get You Alone,” and it sampled Walter Murphy’s “Fifth of Beethoven,” the 1976 disco-classical fusion, a hybrid of flash and seriousness that Mr. Thicke appeared perfectly comfortable with, even if few others were: wildly out of step with the sound of the time, his single never hit the American charts.
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Chad Batka for The New York Times
On his new album, “Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke becomes a conservator of classic soul, more respectful than inventive.
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Peter Kramer/NBC NewsWire, via Getty Images
Mayer Hawthorne, in albums like “Where Does This Door Go,” also preserves soul without innovating it.
Jump forward to “Blurred Lines,” the song that has topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks now, and that has elevated Mr. Thicke from white-soul curio to pop certainty. There he is in the crisp video, chipper and smug, in a beautifully cut suit, frolicking with barely clothed models (in the version where they’re wearing clothes at all, that is). He has the look of a man finally coming into the privilege he was sure was his all along.
But don’t let the video’s modernism fool you: white-soul conservatism is the order of the day, and this hit is just as nostalgic as Mr. Thicke’s first single was, under a much cooler cover. “Blurred Lines” is influenced heavily by Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up,” and even with the producer Pharrell Williams’s clean, large drums and a sizzling, naughty guest rap by T.I., Mr. Thicke can’t help himself — he loves yesterday way more than today. That’s also clear from the bulk of his new album, also called “Blurred Lines” (Star Trak/Interscope), on which his hit is one of several songs that sound helicoptered in from three or four decades ago. Mr. Thicke may be the sound of now, but he’s only passing for contemporary.
With its full-band soul arrangements that hark back to disco and before, “Blurred Lines” is a loud reminder of the fundamental conservatism of white soul. Nostalgia is a frequent hallmark of white participation in black genres, a way of signaling respect and knowledge without presuming to reshape the art form’s present. It’s a safe space, guaranteeing an audience of nostalgists and that-white-boy-can-sing true-schoolers.
That leaves white singers — in the last few years, there have been Mr. Thicke, Mayer Hawthorne, Eli (Paperboy) Reed, Allen Stone, Nick Waterhouse, Jamie Lidell and many more — largely in the role of preservers of a heritage. They are tentative innovators, if innovators at all. That isn’t the case 100 percent of the time, but there hasn’t been a white-soul singer at the genre’s vanguard in quite some time, and at the moment, there is no Eminem of R&B.
Luckily for Mr. Thicke, though, it so happens that 2013 is the best year in a while to be a white-soul conservative, thanks largely to the newly mature, and newly dull, Justin Timberlake, whose third album, “The 20/20 Experience” (RCA), was released in March. (A follow-up album is due next month.)
At one point, just after his liberation from ’NSync, Mr. Timberlake was the vanguard figure of pop-R&B, partnering with the hip-hop visionary Timbaland to create the most inventive pop of the day. (You could also argue that ’NSync itself was an innovator in forward-thinking R&B.) But Mr. Timberlake is now 32, and far removed from his best pop star years. His sheer fame, though, has made conservatism cool.
It’s in that environment that Mr. Thicke, 36, has thrived. Of the old ideas on “Blurred Lines,” the album, the title track is the most modern. Mr. Thicke is a singer of sometimes punishing sincerity; “Blurred Lines” is such a departure for him not just because it is less blatantly throwback than his typical fare, but also because he’s arching his eyebrows throughout the song, willingly poking fun at himself.
But what’s striking is how unambitious most of the rest of the album is, especially the half that’s produced by Mr. Thicke with his longtime production partner Pro-Jay. They’re pleasant enough, these songs about seduction and tender love, but musically, Mr. Thicke is still interested in the same modes he was a decade ago: smooth crooning, orchestral soul, disco thump. “Ooo La La” is so slick it could pass for something by Toro Y Moi, who’s been refabricating 1980s soul through a child’s lens for the last few years. “Ain’t No Hat 4 That” is ornate and explosive — it’s a reminder that sometimes in the past, soul was a luxury concept.
That idea is wrung dry like a washcloth by Mayer Hawthorne, 34, who recently released his third album, “Where Does This Door Go” (Universal Republic), full of thick disco and 1960s soul homage. Early in his career, Mr. Hawthorne was quickly upstreamed from the soul nostalgist underground to the majors, almost too quickly for him to decide whether his tepid productions were to be taken seriously.
This album is his most committed to date. He has a meager voice, and a boatful of ideas, especially about the yacht-soul of the 1970s. It’s notionally erotic music — more so than Mr. Thicke’s, whose sound is more complicated — but it rarely feels sweaty, because Mr. Hawthorne won’t, or can’t, commit.
Over the course of an album, his smoothness reads as aggressive shtick. Wine comes up a few times as a signifier, because, of course, it does. Mr. Hawthorne’s version of soul music is a fantasia, a collection of received ideas. It should be said, though, that in the context of his conservative peers, that insincerity feels like a kind of innovation. He knows exactly where he stands — on the outside.
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shakir ali
