Tim: Occasionally, you get tracks that are by awful people and that you really want to hate, and it’s incredibly annoying when they’re actually pretty good.
Tim: You see? Nicki Minaj aside (which almost makes it worse), this is a really decent track.
Tom: Agreed — and despite the fact that I’ve got a lot of respect for Nicki Minaj, that middle eight really isn’t to my taste. But you know what? There’s no-one else who could do her job on this song. Those are her lyrics, in her voice. Robin Thicke, though, is entirely replaceable here: he brings nothing that couldn’t be achieved by a decent session vocalist.
Tim: Exactly – a decent session vocalist would have been fine, so why Robin bloody Thicke? He’s just SUCH A TWAT. But this time, I can’t really hold the lyrics against him – even they’re OK, if we ignore the bit at the start when he refers to himself as a ‘beast”.
Tom: Really? ‘Cos this is some pretty dodgy stalker-ex stuff. “I want to live between your legs”? Really?
Tim: Compared to “what rhymes with hug me?”, I’ll take it. The vocals are softly sung and on point, with a catchy but not irritating hook to them, and the melody and instrumentation is all very enjoyable indeed. Basically, 99% of Robin Thicke’s part of this song is really good, and I utterly hate that.