Prompted by their similarity of style, I decided to compare this song with Kelly Clarkson’s 'Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)'. It turns out that both were mixed by the same person and mastered at Sterling Sound — although by different mastering engineers. The main difference for me is that the Pink track has more of a ‘smile’ curve to its EQ profile, such that the Clarkson sounds slightly boxy, by comparison, on larger systems. However, move onto a smaller speaker and the recessed mid-range of ‘Blow Me’ starts to become rather gutless — the kick and snare lose power and the lead vocal doesn’t have the same kind of subjective ‘size’. Pink’s low end also seems to cause more problems with intelligibility in distorted playback conditions.

The density of the mid-range backing instruments during each song’s choruses is another significant point of divergence. Pink’s team seem to have favoured vocal clarity, so have given less emphasis to backing parts in this spectral region, whereas in ‘Stronger’, the backing delivers much more subjective power in the same region, although at the cost of masking Clarkson’s vocal inflections more heavily.

In short, ‘Blow Me’ seems, to me, better suited to car stereos and home mini-systems than ‘Stronger’, but less well suited to smaller, cheaper devices with built-in speakers. Could this have contributed to Clarkson’s single outselling Pink’s? I’m sure I won’t be the only person asking that question…