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Robin Thicke coming to Madison Square Garden

BY GLENN GAMBOA | glenn.gamboa@newsday.com

September 29, 2008

Robin Thicke believes the country is looking for change, and he's hoping his new album, "Something Else" (Interscope), in stores tomorrow, can provide the soundtrack. Calling from a tour stop in Virginia Beach, Thicke talks about following up a hit album and the smash single "Lost Without You."

The retro-soul feel on the new single "Magic" is fantastic. Is that the vibe you wanted for the whole album?

I never think about that beforehand. I've been on the road for two years with my band, so I just took the band with me into the studio, and we just tried to create magic that we do live on the road. Then, I added a lot of horns and strings, so I just kind of ended up with that '70s sound. I wanted to do something like when I'm up in the club and I hear these Curtis Mayfield records still today, or Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder, and they're still the hottest records that you can play at midnight in the hottest club in the hottest city. They're timeless. There's something to the feeling that the music gives you - the rose and the concrete or the struggle and the hope - something that the music of the '60s and the '70s has.

"The struggle and the hope," is something you've experienced yourself in your career.

It's been a dual road. As a

writer-producer, I've always been very blessed and successful. But as a singer, I got scared, and I hid.

Then, I put out an album, and it didn't commercially succeed.

Well, the success of "The Evolution of Robin Thicke" changed that. How did that affect this new album?

It gave me the freedom musically to do whatever I wanted to do. But it was also about what I was going through. After two years on the road, singing the same songs, doing the same thing every day, I needed something else. When I was making the album, it just happened to coincide with Barack Obama's rise. Being an ardent supporter of him, and believing what he has to say and what he is doing, it just started to tumble over into my album and what I was doing.

WHO Robin Thicke opens

for Mary J. Blige

WHEN|WHERE 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan

INFO $69.50-$305.50 at Ticketmaster, 631-888-9000, ticketmaster.com