Song: “What About Us?”
A rare repeat, this pre-pandemic song seems even more relevant today
Pink (born Alecia Beth Moore) is awesome. She’s strong, gives amazing performances (she can sing powerfully spinning from a rope upside down), and is authentic, perhaps to a fault at times. She’s a lot of things at once — a bad ass and a softie, a flame and a beacon. Her voice can bring down the roof, and it can break your heart.
Pink was facing headwinds — both artistically and commercially — when “What About Us” was released in 2017, the first single from her album Beautiful Trauma.
Commercially, her record company’s support was getting shaky around this time, as she tells it:
. . . the record company sat me down and told me that once you are over 35 and a female pop star, radio probably won’t play you.
Artistically, “What About Us” didn’t strike the record executives as a potential hit. The song’s structure defies conventional songwriting rules, consisting of three chords repeated endlessly in slightly different styles, with Pink’s vocals providing the glue, and changes in synth sounds and intensity infusing the song with its dynamics.
But the structure proves utterly brilliant in the end. The song’s repetitive Fm–D♭–A♭ chords become a sort of mantra. Johnny McQuaid, guitarist for Snow Patrol and a co-writer on the song (along with Pink and producer Steve Mac), explained this approach in an interview with Billboard:
. . . [the chords] just repeat and repeat and repeat to give Alecia the stage to weave the melody into a place where it would soar into this incredible, epic celebration and the unity that comes from it. It’s a fun thing to get challenged by the limitation like that, actually — those limitations end up increasing the heat and the fire of the song. And Alecia was . . . really excited by that: The repetition in the song, the idea that it would become almost like a heartbeat as it just got inside you and became integral when you listened to it. You didn’t have to think. That was very important.
And I love the question in the song; the fact that the song is a question, it’s not an instruction. I think more questions, less answers, because all of us are looking for answers . . . The questions are where the heat and energy is. We need to question more . . .
“What About Us?” was a massive hit for Pink, reaching the Top 10 in 16 different countries, and #1 in the US on the Adult Contemporary, Adult Top 40, and Dance Club Songs charts.
The song was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance.
Never underestimate Pink.
Enjoy!
