P!nk

One Liner: Pop rock star from 20 years ago

Wikipedia Genre: Pop, pop-rock, R&B
Home: America

Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.  Saturday.

Thoughts:  I mean, my immediate and honest thoughts here are as follows: WTF?  Pink feels about as likely to be top three for the ACL lineup as Kelly Clarkson or the Spice Girls.  Is she even still making music?  The last time I remember knowing about a song she made was back when Charlie's Angels was in the theaters.  There it is, 2001's M!ssundaztood has "Get the Party Started," is the only song on her discography that I recognize by the title and could sing a bar of.  "What About Us" sounds familiar, but I couldn't even hum a bar for you from memory.  Which is freaking wild, that someone like that is #2.  She's been around for 22 years and has a single song that a casual fan knows!  I'm sure you, dear reader, are deeply familiar with her catalog, but I'm absolutely shocked that she is #2 on the poster.

I just did a search for artists like Pink, and allmusic.com says she is similar to Demi Lovato, Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Icona Pop, Jessie J, Katy Perry, and Kelly Clarkson.  Of those, you could make a case for Katy Perry being a top artists on a big festival lineup in 2022, but the rest would be a hard no.  Really weird.

Anyhoo - you didn't come here for my lack of knowledge and incredulity.  You came here to figure out who the hell P!nk is, because you also have no clue how she got here.  Let's get into it.

Her real name is Alicia Moore.  She was originally part of a group called Choice, but then went out on her own in 1995.  Despite what I said above about her being a jenky #2 artist, Wikipedia says that she has sold over 60 million albums worldwide and is one of the "world's best-selling music artists."  She trained as a competitive gymnast until she was 12.  And started performing in Philly clubs when she was about 14 years old.  Since then, she's won multiple Grammys and other awards, she's sung the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, got a Hollywood Star, named People Magazine's most beautiful, and done a bunch of other major artist things.  I think I'm just in the dark about her, apparently.

She definitely has a distinctive voice - super powerful, but at the same time it is raw and husky at times.  Loads of emotion in her voice.

2000's Can't Take Me Home was her debut, and it actually has a totally different feel than her current most popular tracks.  Double platinum as well.  The opening song - "Split Personality" very much sounds like some late 90's R&B, like Aaliyah or TLC.  The top track even steals the harpsichord sounds from "Scrubs."  This is "There You Go" with 31.9 million streams.

That is really weird to hear, after all of her top tracks are so rock-lite-centric.  "Sometimes it beez like that."  But nothing about that song sounds familiar - well, other than it sounding like TLC rip off.

But then 2001's M!ssundaztood (that is a really hard title to type) shifted a little to add some more guitar and rock attitude.  This album went multi-platinum with more than 13 million albums sold world-wide.  Which is a buttload!  Three big tracks on there, from "Don't Let Me Get Me" (66.9 million streams), "Just Like a Pill" (144.8 million), and the only track that I knew before I started this, "Get the Party Started," with 156.3 million.

See - no more pink hair and rapper/basketball cute guys, now it's all about sexy, blonde, punky hair and alternative-rocker-looking cute guys.  Genuinely fun song for sure.  I don't think I had ever heard "Like a Pill" in my life.  Super generic pop rock.  But all three of those songs apparently went to #1 internationally.  Oddly, some of these tracks have less than 4 million streams.  Maybe this disc came out before streaming and so most people are just picking and choosing the ones they remember, instead of listening to the whole thing.

2003's Try This is even less popular, with several songs stream totals under 2 million.  And yet, this album won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.  She beat Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams.  Four of those definitely do not seem like rock artists.  The opening track is the top one with another pop rock track called "Trouble."  It's actually pretty good.  The second track surprisingly sounded familiar to me, called "God is a DJ."  Kind of reminds me of Sheryl Crow's later songs.  18.1 million streams.

Now she's dropped the spiky party hair and is going with more of a London pompadour/mullet thing.  That chorus is just awful.  "If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor, Love is the rhythm, you are the music."  Like something I wrote in poetry class in 4th grade and got an F on.  There is still some R&B hidden among the pop rock here - like "Catch Me While I'm Sleeping," but you can tell that she has mainly transitioned into the rock lane.  But I can also see why no one is going back to listen to these old songs.

2006's I'm Not Dead includes a track with the Indigo Girls (not the most popular track) and two big tracks.  "U + Ur Hand" has just over 100 million streams and "Who Knew" boasts 192.8 million.  The title of the album makes me think that people had either thought she was dead or she felt written off because fame had passed her by.  Not sure which.  Here is her quote about the album title: "It's about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up even though people would like you to."  Yeah man, stick it to the man, man.  Here is "Who Knew."

Now we are to the big Madonna hairdo for this POWER BALLAD action.  Can't recall ever hearing this one either, but its more of the light rock stuff that I bet still gets played on Magic 95 and Bob FM every day.  "Nobody Knows" sounds like she was trying to crib off of the Beatles.  The Indigo Girls one is actually a little hardcore - singing directly to President George W Bush about how shitty he was for womens' rights when he had daughters of his own.  "U + Ur Hand" is just an awful song.  I get that she's going for another woman empowerment song telling the guy to go home and get it on with himself, but it's just a deeply terrible mix of garbage faux-rock tune mixed with her overbearing lyrics.

2008 brought us Funhouse and her third biggest track - "So What."  Another #1 song on the charts.  Also, the album overall has a lot more streams than those earlier discs.  Only one song under 10 million streams.  Never heard "Sober" (127.8 million streams) or "Please Don't Leave Me" (110.4 million).  Likewise, nothing rings a bell about "So What."  413 million streams.

Back to the punk hair thing.  That video is just deeply obnoxious, just trying so hard to be punk when she is just so not punk.  "So what, I'm still a rock star, I got my rock moves, and I don't need you."  I got my rock moves.  Yep.  She sings that repeatedly.  Dammit, and then ten minutes after hearing this my brain sang "nanananananana I'm gonna start a fight."

You know what I just realized?  P!nk is the Chili Peppers for the ladies.  Half of the appeal of the Chilis is that they just rock out and sing dumb lyrics and are a fun time to party.  P!nk is just doing the same thing but with lesser musicians involved.  This is music for ladies who just want to jump around to a rock song and sing about how guys suck or they wanna party, but they don't want the rock song to be too rock-y or loud.  Like, Metallica let normal kids like me think they were in to metal for a minute, or Green Day made me believe that I liked punk for a moment.  But then I tried real metal and was immediately frightened back to my old stuff.  That is the same here - a lady like my wife, who never wants to hear screaming or heavy guitar can pop these tunes on and feel vaguely rebellious and excited by the rock, but not be frightened.  I'm sure you had already known that, but this is the inoffensive (but acts like it is offensive) party rock band for the ladies to enjoy.

2012's The Truth About Love shows her embracing the streaming age by including 17 songs and over an hour for the runtime.  But it also includes her biggest tune and another with over 415 million streams.  This was her first album to hit #1 on the charts.  The monster hit is with Nate Ruess, who you might remember from the band Fun, because he was the lead singer of that band who had the huge hit or two with Jack Antonoff.  This is "Just Give Me a Reason," with 896.7 million streams.

I feel like I had to have heard of that song previously, but before just listening to it again, I very honestly could not have sung any of it.  Also, since I apparently have been very into hairdos this whole time, she is now in the weird tubular pompadour thing at this stage.  Not a bad song.  Cheesy love ballad and all, but a good catchy tune and their voices sound really good together.  "Slut Like You" is a deeply cheesy slice of schlock.  "Beam Me Up" sounds like more Sheryl Crow.  I really hope we are almost done with these albums, as I'm deeply tired of super-generic soft rock by now.

2017's Beautiful Trauma has another big one - her second biggest streamer.  And overall, the album looks to have been a hit - the lowest streamer is just below 20 million streams.  Has a track with Eminem on it, and that makes me think that a lot of these songs sound a lot like those bad Eminem songs that sort of include a rock element while he raps - like the "Love the Way You Lie" one with the lady singing parts and then Eminem rapping parts.  P!nk does both the rapping and the singing in this comparison, but the bad backing songs are the same.  "What About Us" was the hit from this album with 619.3 million streams.

Now we are doing a poofy hair pouf and then the shaved head thing.  Sounds very much like a show tune.  Like someone in Hamilton should be belting this to the sky as a group of freed slaves dance in the background.  The song is a little more of an electronic tune than most of the others on this album, and seems to be a protest song about people who are being forgotten or marginalized.

Damn.  One more album.  2019's Hurts to Be Human.  Has a few tracks with over 100 million streams, including the big one at 346 million, "Walk Me Home."  A few cool collaborations on here too, with Chris Stapleton and Khalid the two big ones.  Here is that "Walk Me Home" one.

Almost a country vibe in that one.  And again, a show tune vibe.  Definitely never heard that song before.  Deeply uninteresting.  A lot of electronic stuff here now - maybe she left the lite rock thing behind in favor of the newer sound that the kids are in to.  Which is honestly even suckier than the lite rock.  But she is good at being a chameleon and moving to the next sound that might keep her in the public eye!  "The Last Song of Your Life" sounds like she is channeling Carole King.

Here is a good set of quotes from her Wikipedia page:  

"James Montgomery of MTV describes her as "a fabulously fearless pop artist" who can "out-sing almost anyone out there. She can out-crazy Gaga or Lily. She's the total pop-star package, everything you'd want in a singer/entertainer/icon. And still, she remains oddly off the radar. Such is the price of busting borders". Entertainment Weekly said: "She essentially invented the whole modern wave of Pop Diva Domination: You can draw a straight line from "Get This Party Started" to Katy Perry, Kesha, pre-messianic Lady Gaga, and post-weird Rihanna." Glamour Magazine wrote: "When Pennsylvania-born Alecia Moore debuted in 2000, pop was dominated by long-locked blonds like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson. Pink changed the game. Without her, the last 13 years of big-voiced, tough chick music is hard to imagine."

Shows you what I know!  

Her most recent release is a live album called All I Know So Far: Setlist.  Which is an odd title.  And an odd set of tunes.  She doesn't play a bunch of the biggest songs, but she covers Cyndi Lauper, No Doubt, Bishop Briggs, and Queen.  But you don't get "Get the Party Started" or "What About Us" or "U + Ur Hand" or "God is a DJ."

I am definitely not interested in seeing her play live. I'm sure I'd have a good time if I just released myself from my skepticism and allowed myself the pleasure of goofy lite rock anthems, but I'm just not feeling it at all today.