It’s no surprise that the recent divorce of America’s most soul-baring mainstream singer would yield an emotionally in-your-face radio single. She loudly shrugs “So What” in the swaggering first smash, but elsewhere reveals a conflicted sincerity that both complicates and sharpens her lyrics, while bringing out genuine rock rawness in her typically slick collaborators. Whether struggling with sobriety or confronting her own meanness, Pink has never been less cool: She’s hot-blooded throughout, and it suits both her pipes and a female pop genre that rarely embraces this much tangible pain.
