Is a song by the comedically named Robin Thicke, who I bet got bullied at school, but that's a different story. It's fairly average R&B club nonsense about picking up women while oot on the tap with your mates. It's got to Number 1 in lots of places. However, that's all immaterial as far as I'm concerned. What is material, though, is the ongoing manufactroversy about it. Probably fuelled no doubt in part by the fact that Mr Thicke (is that pronounced Thick or Thickie or what?) was Miley Cyrus's twerking partner recently.
See, the song contains the fateful lines, "you know you want it" and "must wanna get nasty." Now to a normal, well-adjusted human being like myself, and taken in context, given the fact that the song is about going to a fleshpit of a club and trying to score with scantily-clad women while sipping champers with your similarly gittish mates, this describes a lass who's playing hard to get somehow, and that this is somehow alluring to the singer and said gittish mates. That's how I see it anyhow. It's fairly obvious, n'est-ce pas?
EH-AHHHHH!
(That's the "wrong" noise from Family Fortunes by the way.)
According to various pundits, commentators, and talking heads from around the internets, it's about rape and specifically somehow the idea that someone knows they want it is glorifying the adulteration of said lassie's drink with flunitrazepam or suchlike, or just bundling her out the back and forcing yourself onto her. This is reportedly a Really Bad Thing and as such, the combined opprobrium of all right-thinking internet users must be brought to bear on Mr Thicke (Theeck? Thighk?) lest the song brainwash people into thinking that rape is somehow acceptable in a civilised society. Certain people, notably Edinburgh University Students' Union, have gone so far as to ban the song from their premises because it violates their equality policies and "safer space" policies. Because apparently someone might feel aurally raped by the song (the concept of being visually or aurally raped that certain gender feminists adopt to me brings up visions of the penis-shaped soundwave from Brass Eye's Paedogeddon episode) and this is not on. It is not, of course, mentioned whether anyone's actually complained - I suspect not, myself, but that's because I'm a cynical old stoat.
Problem is, all this complaining is having precisely the opposite effect that it is intended to have. Now anyone who's not heard of the song surely has, and probably looked it up for good measure. As long as they spell his name right, he'll be laughing all the way to the bank. I know I would be. I can't help but feel that the song, and it's ridiculously over the top video, which features, among other things, women in flesh-coloured thongs cavorting around and balloons with letters on them that spell out "Robin Thicke has a huge penis" were designed just to cause this level of butthurt and thus bolster sales accordingly, while keeping the lyrics fairly inoffensive. Hence why I referred to it as a manufactroversy.
And while we're on the subject of lyrics, it's surely open to interpretation, as I've set out above. No doubt the foamers in charge at Edinburgh Student Union went into it looking for rape, and thus found it, the same way that Tipper Gore went into the PMRC looking for sex and violence and drugs and glorification of suicide and thus found it (the latter in an Ozzy song about alcoholism, "Suicide Solution".) So... yes. It seems to me that the only reason people reckon that this song is so offensive is that, like Tipper Gore, they have filthy minds.
And now, little children, here is a song that actually is about rape, lyrical interpretation or no. See if you can spot the difference.