Tom: How can she do it? This is Pink, the same Pink who recently charted with the laughing party-song irritating-vocal-interruption-filled Raise Your Glass. And now she’s released a song that’s going to make a generation of misunderstood teenagers cry.
Genuine warning here: this is the uncensored video, which includes sex and some fairly brutal images of self-harm. Any of our readers who’ve been through similar things may not want them brought back into their memory – which does question if showing them, and almost glamorising them, in a pop video is really the right thing to do.
Tom: With all that said: what a track. And what a video.
Tim: Indeed. And you think it’s glamorising it? The whole message of the song is don’t do this – you’re perfect, so ignore the people that make you feel otherwise. “Done looking for the critics, cause they’re everywhere…why do we do that?” The whole song is a powerful spirit-lifter – you should listen to it when you’re feeling shit.
Tom: As for the music: the only thing that I don’t like in here is the ‘pretty pretty please’ bit, but I can’t really ding it any points just because a few words annoy me. It’s very much a Song With A Message, and a fairly simple one at that, which normally would cause all the cynical parts of my brain to rise up in disgust… but somehow that didn’t happen.
Tim: It’s because it’s not just a Song With A Message that anyone can do – there’s a real feeling that here, it’s personal, it’s coming from inside Pink herself, and that makes it so much more powerful that it otherwise would be.
Tom: And I think it’s because, hell, it’s Pink – and she has that amazing voice that can go between ‘loud and anthemic’ and ‘deep and emotional’ in a split second. This might well be her new concert-ender. It deserves to be.