Pink – ‘So What’

2 October 2008

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, and I wouldn’t rank it much higher as a form of pop song either. The snarky “na-na-na-na na-na-na…” that starts off Pink’s ‘So What’, and is repeated several times in the verses, wearies me fast. So does a chorus of “So what / I’m still a rock star”, and by this stage I’m too weary to look for any nuance or levels of meaning. I was surprised to see Max Martin as a collaborator here: I’d have thought his pop smarts were sharper than this. Maybe the brief here really was to wilfully overheat ‘catchy’ into ‘annoying’ – or maybe by 2008 Max Martin was growing weary too.

There’s a defiant real-life break-up song somewhere in ‘So What’, one which can still be funny and assertive, without any tear-squeezing schmaltz. But when the mid-section here pitches itself towards rawk emoshuns, it feels like a mainstream airplay-chasing track trying to have it both ways: yuks and feels. Or maybe that bit’s sarcastic too! For all the energy and charisma Pink brings to this, from me this slice of nominative determinism gets a shrug and a ‘nah’.