14 DAY TRIAL // New figures indicate that Robin Thicke isn’t having just a bad year: he’s having the worst year of his life, both professionally and on a personal level. With his new album, “Paula,” selling less than 50 copies in its first week out in Australia, it’s pretty safe to say it sucks to be Robin Thicke today.
Or, you know, anyone from his management or record label.
Thicke was undeniably the pop star of the year 2013 thanks to “Blurred Lines,” which, despite a lot of controversy around its “rapey” lyrics and its very graphic music video, became the biggest hit of the year, getting massive airplay all over the world.
One would think that such a big hit would generate enough interest to put his next project on the map. One would be wrong to assume that, even with all the interest manifested by the media in Thicke’s personal life.
In a somewhat unprecedented move, Thicke has become a victim of that which is known as “too much of a good thing,” i.e. all this media attention and all the tabloid rumors did not work in his favor but have actually helped fans to understand that he is not the kind of man and artist they would support financially by buying his work.
So, his latest album, “Paula,” titled this way after his estranged wife Paula Patton, on whom he cheated with countless randoms until she had enough and asked for a divorce, sold a mere 530 copies in its first week in the UK.
And that’s not even the worst part of it, because it performed even worse in Australia, News.com.au informs.
“Thicke’s follow up album, Paula, didn’t even make the ARIA Top 500. For some perspective, the album at No. 500, a Blondie compilation, sold just 54 copies in Australia last week. That means less than 50 Australians purchased Paula in its first week of release,” the publication says.
That means that less than 50 people in Australia care enough about what Thicke has to say about the demise of his marriage to buy his album.
Things aren’t looking good in other territories either, though they’re inarguably better. The best sales for the first week of release are in the US, but they’re way under expectations: 25,000 copies.
It’s not just the fans that aren’t interested in Thicke’s new music because the critics have also been having a field day trashing it for being excessively cheesy and stalkerish. It’s not quality pop music, they’re saying.
If Thicke was really thinking he could win his wife back by recording this kind of album for her and pretty much embarrassing her publicly by singing about their most intimate moments, he thought wrong.