Influenced by:
- Mary J. Blige, PJ Harvey, Billy Joel, Janis Joplin, Madonna, Linda Perry
Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
— "Try"
Alecia Beth Moore Hart (born September 8, 1979), better known as P!nk, is an American pop Singer-Songwriter. She first gained popularity in 2000 as an R&B singer before taking creative control of her career and switching to a more retro pop/rock sound, though her R&B origins can still be heard from time to time.
Throughout her career, now over two decades long, P!nk has racked up three Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, and 12 Top 20 hits, including two (solo) number ones: "So What" and "Raise Your Glass". With sales of over 30 million albums and over 70 million singles, she has experienced both critical and commercial success. In 2009, Billboard named her the number-one pop artist of the decade.
Not to be confused with Pink Floyd.
Discography:
Albums
- Can't Take Me Home (2000)
- Missundaztood (2001)
- Try This (2003)
- I'm Not Dead (2006)
- Funhouse (2008)
- The Truth About Love (2012)
- Beautiful Trauma (2017)
- Hurts 2B Human (2019)
- Trustfall (2023)
Compilations
- Greatest Hits... (So Far!!!) (2010)
- Funhouse Tour: Live in Australia (2009)
- All I Know So Far: Setlist (2021)
Videography
- P!nk: Live in Europe (2006)
- P!nk: Live from Wembley Arena (2007)
- P!nk: Live in Australia (2009)
- P!nk: The Truth About Love Tour Live From Melbourne (2013)
"The Truth About Tropes":
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: "Don't Let Me Get Me" puts the emphasis on the NYE in Britney Spears' name to fit the rhyming scheme.
- Artifact Alias: An interesting case. She has said that she got her stage name from Mr. Pink of Reservoir Dogs, but she did have pink hair at the start of her career, possibly to explain where the name "Pink" came from. However, right after her first album, she starting going more toward blond with pink highlights, and is now fully blond, and has probably left a few newer fans wondering where the hell the name Pink came from.
- Badass Boast: "Cuz I Can", "18 Wheeler", both songs take a tone of "you don't want to mess with me"—something she says practically word for word in "U + Ur Hand."
- Blood Knight: Well, "So What" does feature the line "I wanna start a fight" sung over and over.
- Bowdlerise:
- Radio edits of "I'll be burning rubber, you'll kissing my ass" from "Get the Party Started" vary. Radio Disney removes the line completely, along with "I can go for miles, if you know what I mean". Other stations replace "kissing my ass" with "watching me pass", change "ass" to "ends" or censor "ass" with the sound of tires squealing.
- Her song "Fuckin' Perfect." There is a radio version that changes the lyrics changed to "less than perfect" and "you are perfect". Another one censors the offending words, including in the title.
- Break-Up Song:
- "So What" and a great part of theFunhouse album.
- Not to mention the lead single, "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" from her sixth album, The Truth About Love. It's much happier and not as bitter as her previous album (which was all about heartbreak) and the title of the song lead you to believe. Though she does say the guy is "full of shit."
- But Not Too White: When Pink first debuted, her deep tan, R&B style, and pairings with black romantic leads in her music videos made many viewers think she was a light-skinned black girl, or at least biracial. But her two white parents would say otherwise.
- The Cameo: She appears in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as a motorcross race camp owner. She also provided the theme song, "Feel Good Time."
- Check, Please!: Spoken aloud in "Slut Like You" after the guy she's attempting to pick up (figuratively) blows it.
- Circus Synths: Her circus-themed pop album Funhouse. Impressively, P!nk herself is a skilled gymnast and acrobat, something she put to great use to capitalize on the circus theme when she did tours for the album.
- Cool Car: "Get The Party Started" contains the line "We'll be looking flashy in my Mercedes Benz".
- Cool Shades: She wears a pair on the Can't Take Me Home album cover.
- Domestic Abuse: Depicted in "Please Don't Leave Me", where the woman goes to psychotic lengths to prevent her boyfriend breaking up with her. The boyfriend is presented entirely sympathetically and the abuser ends up getting her just deserts in the end.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Can't Take Me Home's R&B-focused sound stands out amongst the majority of her music which has pop rock, pop funk, pop country, and other pop elements.
- Ethical Slut: "Slut Like You" seems to be told from the perspective of one, who nonetheless gets a kick out of revealing to the guy she picks up that she's not as innocent as he thought.
- Fan of Underdog/Freaky Is Cool/Nerds Are Sexy: "Raise Your Glass"
- Four More Measures: In "Raise Your Glass", she screws up the timing at the climax: "So raise your... aw, fuck."
- Gale-Force Sound: In "All I Know So Far", P!nk literally screams the hair off of a few men, though it's a No-Sell against one, so she deals with him by other means
- Genre Roulette: In her prime, this was a specialty of hers. She's done pure pop, Pop Punk, contemporary Rock, Techno, Soul, Glam Rock and a more straight-laced Singer-Songwriter style, even flirting with Country Music at times. Her original style leaned towards R&B, as heard on Can't Take Me Home.
- Grief Song: "Who Knew".
- Hand-or-Object Underwear/Toplessness from the Back: In the video for "There You Go."
- Important Haircut: The actress in the "Fuckin' Perfect" video undergoes one.
- Intercourse with You: A few of her songs, notably "Oh My God".
- The Lad-ette: "I drink more than you/and I party harder than you/and my car's faster than yours,' the opening lyrics from "Cuz I Can"... and that's just the beginning of it.
- Lucky Charms Title: Her "i" is an exclamation point.
- Metronomic Man Mashing: In the video for "All I Know So Far", P!nk does this with a man before tossing him away
- Monster Clown: The lyrics and video for "Funhouse".
- New Sound Album: Her first album had a very R&B sound to it. However, for her second album onwards, she switched to a more pop/rock style.
- Panty Thief: From "Raise Your Glass":"Party crasher, panty snatcher"
- Parental Issues:
- "Family Portrait".
- Mentioned in "Fuckin' Perfect" too.
- Parody: The video for "Stupid Girls" includes parodies of Nicole Richie and Jessica Simpson's Hood Ornament Hottie video for "These Boots are Made for Walking", Lindsay Lohan's frequent fender-benders, Mary Kate Olsen's bohemian fashion, and one directed at Paris Hilton's mention of her sex tape and Carl's Jr. commercial, as well as those miniature dogs that some girls use more as accessories than pets.
- Pink Is Erotic: Invoked with her name due to the themes of sex in her music. The origin of her name was based on this
, allegedly, she showed her vagina to one of her friends and he remarked: "It’s pink!" The name itself was inspired by Reservoir Dogs, as she was named "Mr. Pink" due to her resemblance to Steve Buscemi. - Precision F-Strike: "Timebomb," a bonus track from The Truth about Love. To a lesser extent, the "kissing my ass" line in "Get The Party Started."
- Psycho Pink: Ironically inverted with the singer. In her earlier music videos, when her hair was usually pink, she was depicted as a hard-partying but fun girl. After she went blonde, she's shown as a more violent character (especially in the videos for "Trouble" and "Try").
- Rage Against the Reflection: In the video for "Don't Let Me Get Me", she stands in front of the mirror in the girls' locker room and makes annoyed gestures at her reflection, who gestures back at her. Irritated, she punches the mirror, cracking it.
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Invoked. Although the song "Stupid Girls" has a point about women are over-sexualized in the media, the music video for that song makes it look like anything feminine is weak and pathetic.
- Revenge Ballad: "Revenge" plays this for laughs, listing all the ways she could get even with her lover.
- Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow: She has mostly disavowed her first album released during the Teen Pop boom in the year 2000. The album had a Pop/R&B sound, but Pink claimed that it was a compromise between her and the label. Her second album is completely different, leaning more in a Pop/Rock direction with a few jabs at her old sound and persona, especially on the song Don't Let Me Get Me. It's telling that on tours, she only performs the three singles from the album and nothing else. Ironically, Pink would Genre Shift back to pop in The New '10s in the form of ballads after the success of "Just Give Me a Reason", a duet with Nate Ruess of fun.
- Rock Star Song: "So What""So what
I'm still a rock star" - Sex Is Violence: The video for "Try", inspired by the notorious "apache" dance routines from early-twentieth-century French cabaret, which were supposedly originally intended to depict a fight between a pimp and a hooker.
- Shaming the Mob: During an acoustic set, Pink noticed two guys out of the corner of her eye fighting in the audience. Then she noticed that their fight was frightening a little girl in front of them, told her guitarist to stop and bitched the two guys from the stage without a second thought. She then looked at the little girl and offered her a toy she had with her on stage to cheer her up.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: "Lady Marmalade" was the first time she got sexy for a music video as opposed to her usual tomboyish look (Rolling Stone joked that Lil' Kim and Christina Aguilera would wear those outfits to the supermarket, but Pink and Mya needed some convincing). Needless to say, it paid off BIG TIME!
- The Show Must Go On: She was suffering from a sore throat in the days before she was scheduled to sing the national anthem at Super Bowl LII in February 2018, with some worrying that she'd have to bow out. Thankfully, she only needed a cough drop and performed nonetheless.
- Silly Love Songs: "Love Song" would be one of her best examples of this trope but "I'm Not Dead" plays with this trope, the song is apparently about her relationship with her main collaborator.
- Studio Chatter:
- Missundazstood; a good half of the song is pure chatter and mistakes. "What? No, this ain't no damn Ex-Lax commercial! This my first single, man!"
- It's a good bet that "Bad Bad Day" was made when P!nk was just screwing around in the studio.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Rough, tough, strong, and as you'll find out through listening to some of her songs, particularly sensitive to the sadness of others.
- Sweetie Graffiti: The video for "So What?" sees her chainsawing down a tree that has "Alecia + Carey" carved inside a heart. The carving was saved after filming and once she and Carey reconciled they kept it as a piece of decoration.
- Take That!:
- "Stupid Girls" disparages Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton for being "famous for being famous" brainless beauties.
- Take That, Critics!: From "Don't Let Me Get Me":
"Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears
She's so pretty that just ain't me"- The second verse of "Don't Let Me Get Me" opens with a direct call-out of her former producer, L.A. Reed, for trying to force her to sacrifice her identity to be popular.
- Those Magnificent Flying Machines: The video for "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" prominently features a Steampunk pedal-powered ornithopter.
- Treadmill Trauma: The video for "Stupid Girls" has a part where P!nk is too preoccupied with comparing herself to the buxom girl using the treadmill next to hers that she stops paying attention to what she's doing. Her treadmill ends up snagging her pants off, leaving her in underpants that say "SAY NO TO FOOD" and the object of mockery of Buxom girl and Cute Guy.
- Tsundere: "True Love", featuring Lily Allen, probably exemplifies this trope, though she has several other songs about her...conflicted feelings, often based on real-life drama.
- Video Full of Film Clips: The video for "Feel Good Time", due to the song being featured on the soundtrack to Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
- Woman Scorned: "There You Go" and some parts of the video for "So What". Ironically, it was her husband (whom she was in the middle of divorcing) appearing in "So What" that got them back together. The divorce was never finalised.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Feel Good Time" has some pretty surreal lines (e.g. "paint our money black, spend it on the enemy"). The song was written by Beck and William Orbit, so the lyrics generally sound more like something Beck would sing.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Missundaztood. Also, "pink" isn't usually spelled with an exclamation point in place of the i.
- Yandere: Pink acts violently obsessive toward her lover in the music video for "Please Don't Leave Me".
