14 DAY TRIAL // Robin Thicke and Paula Patton were together for over 20 years and seemed one of the most solid couples in showbiz. There were some rumors about how theirs was an open marriage, which was what had made it work for so long, but they were never addressed directly.
In early 2014, Paula walked out on Robin. It would be many more months later that she would file for divorce, refusing to speak to the media about what happened behind closed doors to want nothing more to do with Robin. He, on the other hand, chose to have everything play out in the open, even writing and recording an entire album meant to get her back.
Obviously, it was called “Paula,” and obviously too, it flopped and chipped away at his credibility as one of the world’s most bankable pop stars.
“Paula” was a mistake
It wasn’t just that the material included on “Paula” was embarrassing and cringe-worthy; it was bad, too. The previous year, Thicke had released the biggest hit of the year, “Blurred Lines” (ft. Pharrell and T.I.), so there was something great to compare it to. “Paula” didn’t match up.
Thicke was shredded for releasing the album and promoting it on all channels made available to him. This included giving it away for free with orders of flowers for a loved one you did wrong.
In the end, the critics hated “Paula;” the fans hated it too, and it gave celebrity and music bloggers something to mercilessly pick on.
In retrospect, maybe recording an entire album about his ex-wife wasn’t a good idea, Thicke admits to the New York Times. But it made sense to him at the time, because he thought women expected grand gestures like this one.
That may very well be the case, but if there’s any truth to the cheating and boozing rumors, perhaps the last thing Paula wanted was to have everything made public after the split.
Thank God for good friends
Thicke admits that his management didn’t want him to release “Paula” because they immediately knew it would turn into a disaster. He did it nonetheless, convinced that, even though it would flop, he would at least get her back.
He didn’t understand how wrong he was until after the BET Awards in June 2014, when he performed one of the tracks off it “Forever Love” (see the video below). That night, back home, one of his friends gave him the cold truth: he wasn’t being romantic, he was being a fool who had just made himself look like the biggest “sucker” alive.
Time had come to take some time off.
“It hit me that I’d lost my perspective. What I thought was romantic was just embarrassing. And he said, ‘You should just go away for a while.’ So I shut everything down. I took some time off to be with my son, and to be with my family and close friends. And the more time I took off, the more everything became clear,” Thicke explains.