Songfacts®:

• A track from The Cure's first album, Three Imaginary Boys, "So What" was the only song for which they didn't have lyrics assembled when they entered the studio. Their drummer Lol Tolhurst supplied Robert Smith with a sheet of lyrics he had been working on, and Smith augmented it with a bag of sugar.
  
  This particular sugar bag had an offer printed on it for a cake icing and decorating set, which he lifted directly:
  
  Give your cakes and pies a professional look
  With this superb decorating set
  ...
  Each set includes a turntable
  A nine-inch icing bag
  With six high definition nozzles and adaptor
  With a 15-inch food decorating bag
  
  Tolhurst described the song as "very Dadaesque."
• Vocalist Robert Smith has said that the song is an example of writing whilst intoxicated. He also described the track as "a sort of scream: after four days shut in a studio, we just had to do something." (Blank Space, 1979).
• The album peaked at #44 in the UK.