While perusing the internets instead of doing the work I should be completing (including my review of last night's awesome CSS show), I came across a thread on Idolator about the P4k/Airborne Toxic Event thing that we've been discussing for the past few days. One commenter, "fantasticrobots" said, "Maybe they should write a really, really great response song instead, like Pelle Carlberg's "Go To Hell, Miss Rydell," which is about him attempting to contact the woman who gave him a bad review."

That got me curious and I found the Calrberg song and it's pretty terrific. It was on his debut, 2005 album Everything, Now!. He sings about how he tracked down a reviewer in Sweden who panned his performance. In it, he says:

So i gave her a ring
and not exactly an engagement ring
I tracked down her number
on the internet
it was the easiest thing

She thought I was rude
to call her at home
I said I was hurt
by what she had written
in that review
and now I wanted to…

She told me, this conversation is over
send me an email when you're sober
and I wasn't even drunk

It is a bit whiny but that's the point, as later on, Carlberg sings "this is the only way I can approach the humiliation; it's a bit stupid and childish, pathetic, but it's a solution". 

I, of course, think it's "stupid and childish" for musicians to lash at out critics. I've written before that "the hero rock star playing to large crowds railing against the asshole critic who wasn’t feeling the same inspiration for their grand opus is the most tired cliché in rock and/or roll." I did think the Airborne Toxic Event handled it about as well as anyone could in the situation (beyond just keeping their mouth shut). When there's egos involved and you've got thousands of fans telling you that you're brilliant and that you kick ass, what does one dude with a laptop matter?

Carlberg gets the last laugh/word because the wise Miss Rydell "never replied, she never replied."

Here's a video of Carlberg singing "Go To Hell, Miss Rydell":