This isn’t turning out to be a good year for Robin Thicke. The singer, who’s been dealing with his divorce from wife Paula Patton and who recently admitted to drug abuse is heading to court for an entirely different problem and it has something to do with Marvin Gaye. So what’s going on? Earlier this year, Thicke along with Pharrell Williams filed a lawsuit against Gaye’s estate after some members of the late Motown musician’s family accused the pair of copying Gaye’s song “Got to Give Up” in their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines.” That prompted the Gaye estate to file their own lawsuit basically stating that Thicke had a “fixation” with the singer and knowingly stole parts from his song to use on his own record. The whole thing went to court and while nothing’s been settled yet, it’s isn’t looking too good for Thicke.
U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt ruled Thursday that the two songs had enough similarities to warrant moving forward with the case and denied Thicke’s motion for summary judgement. All of this comes after the singer’s April deposition which revealed he’d been high on Vicodin and alcohol throughout the recording process, had lied about Gaye’s influence on the record and hadn’t been too involved in the creation of what became his biggest hit to date:
After making six albums that I wrote and produced myself, the biggest hit of my career was written and produced by somebody else and I was jealous and I wanted some of the credit. 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 — I — 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 and I — because I didn’t want him — 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.
A trial is currently scheduled for Feb. 10, 2015.
