Album review: Robin Thicke – Paula

The smooth-talking singer's seventh studio album is a two-dimensional depiction of the rejection, self-pity, unfocused anger and desperation that accompany a relationship breakdown.

Robin Thicke performs in concert at Madison Square Garden in March in New York City. Charles Sykes / Invision / AP Photo

Robin Thicke

Paula

(Star Trak /Interscope)⋆

One star

You almost have to feel sorry for Robin Thicke. Almost. In 2013, the smooth-talking, Los Angeles-born R&B stalwart finally achieved international megastardom, with his single Blurred Lines becoming more ubiquitous than oxygen itself. Then, before the 37-year-old barely had time to smugly bask in his belated glory, came accusations of lyrical misogyny, marital infidelity and that flat-out creepy MTV VMAs performance with Miley Cyrus, a girl 16 years his junior. Now his wife, Paula Patton, wants a divorce. Where did it all go right? And then so badly wrong?

This chapter of his life story is far from over, though, if Thicke has anything to do with it. Because Paula is an album designed to win back the mother of his child – a shameless, blubbing-on-the-doorstep take-me-back note.

In much the same way as you imagine Thicke operates when courting members of the opposite gender, he's relentless from the get-go. You're My Fantasy is a six-minute flamenco whine that contains the world's worst pickup line ("Oh baby I've got a feeling we were lovers in a previous life") and ends with the plea: "Pretty, pretty please / Come home to me." But Lock the Door gives us his first is-he-really-doing-this-in-public moment. The key line: "She locked the door / I keep knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking." Stop knocking, Robin. Paula will call the police in a minute.

The comparatively upbeat Living in New York City is chiefly notable, meanwhile, for juxtaposing a childish attempt at inspiring jealousy ("Wait 'til you see what I do / When I find somebody like you") with what appears to be an oblique reference to September 11. In short, it's a new low.

The slick shuffle of Too Little Too Late is the undoubted highlight – largely for admitting the futility of the entire exercise – and by the time that the departing ballad, Forever Love, fades to black, if you weren't rooting for Paula before, you sure will by now.

What could, in more skilled hands, have been a glorious redemption instead merely enhances Thicke’s burgeoning reputation as the non-thinking-man’s exponent of blue-eyed soul. Paula is a two-dimensional depiction of the rejection, self-pity, unfocused anger and desperation that accompany a relationship breakdown. And as if Patton wasn’t already creeped out by her estranged husband’s alleged antics with other women, she’ll be adding this album to the roll call of evidence on their divorce papers.