Is there a statement more punk than “So What?” This song feels like performance art happening right in front of you, like you’re in the room as The Cure goes on a bass grove and Robert Smith snidely recites an ad for some sort of cake icing accessories.
Cake icing and decorating set
Special offer
Only 3 pound 30
Save 1 pound 52 on recommended retail price
Give your cakes and pies a professional look
With this superb
Decorating set
There’s a propelling F-the-world vibe to enjoy, but what’s going on inside? Is this anti-materialistic? He sings the ad in staccato jabs and taunting drunken slurs, like any society that produces ads for cake accessories disgusts him.
With three piping nozzles
Please send off this leaflet
Post it today
But then This!
And if you knew
Nothing could replace you
If you were sane
Your heart wouldn’t ache
But so what?
So what?
And I wouldn’t ask you to pretend
That we were one
And still another time
Forget all the lies
Forgive me the wounds
And all the world was used to love
And yes we’d still be happy in another time
But so what?
So what?
So did a pastry chef break his heart? Did he buy his cake girl the set, only to reap not the promised pies with a professional look, but a wounded sense of loss? In the end we hear him crumple the ad, and repeat his song title, “So What?” And again great art is born out of agony.