Now, because of the song’s ‘rapey’ lyrics and video, it has been torn apart by feminists and banned from several student unions. And this got me thinking – is the commercial success of the single indicative of a wider culture of rape tolerance amongst young people; a culture that we will come to be ashamed of in years to come?

I’ll explain.

Since the death of Sir Jimmy Savile, Scotland Yard’s Operation Yewtree has exposed a culture of paedophile-tolerance present in many areas of the media throughout the 60s and 70s. A culture which might have seen the mind-bendingly awful crimes of Ian Watkins go unreported had they occurred a generation before.

Was anyone surprised? The fetishisation of minors was used by dozens of recording artists to sell singles. Why the fuck didn’t anyone pipe up at the time?

Were eyebrows raised when Bob Dylan sneered ‘She breaks just like a little girl’ in Just Like a Woman? How about Mick Jagger explaining ‘it's no hanging matter’ in Stray Cat Blues?

Hell, from Abba to Zeppelin, lyricists - informed by the sexual revolution of the 60s - flirted with the notion of underage sex, right up until the late 80s. Actually, the 1993 accusations of child abuse levelled at the singer Michael Jackson act as a kind of watershed in the use of underage sex as a theme in pop music.

With this in mind, Blurred Lines appears pretty sinister.

In a particularly secular country like the UK, pop music and sports matches are the dominant forms of mass participation, and as such offer the most profound opportunities for groupthink.

This is demonstrated in equal measure whether chanting vile abuse at individual footballers, or singing ‘Girl, I know you want it’ in a student union. Groupthink occurs when members try to minimise conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. It’s bad news.

There are plenty of songs that carry dubious messaging, but rape is too easy to get away with to be dealt with playfully. A Mumsnet survey last year concluded that 10% of all women in the UK claim to have been raped, and this backs up the perception that the vast majority of rapes go unreported amid complex feelings of humiliation and trauma.

Sinister messaging is at its most dangerous when presented as fun. A song’s commercial success is not it’s own justification, in the same way you cannot equate public opinion as a guarantor of a sound ethical code. Everything about Blurred Lines makes me uncomfortable. It smacks of rohypnol and nightmares.