SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS
Pink is back honest as ever ... and still proving people wrong
It’s no secret that Pink loves a highflying stunt. The 38-year-old singer, whose seventh album Beautiful Trauma debuted at the top of both the U.K. and U.S. Billboard charts in October, has been incorporating them into her stadium act for years. But her recent performance at the American Music Awards took her daring to a new level. Dangling in the darkness outside the 30th floor of the glass-walled Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles while waiting to hurl herself into a show-stopping “vertical dance” performance of the album’s title track, she was, says Pink, “truly, the most terrified I’ve ever been. Something about the dark, the exposure and the sheer drop felt wrong on every level. Every cell in my body was screaming: GET DOWN!”
Then she noticed a guy inside his hotel room, filming the view with his phone. “I couldn’t help myself. I banged on the window as hard as I could and he screamed. I laughed for about five minutes. That took the tension out of it.”
Clutching my knees to steady herself, she roars at the memory, her magnificent milkshake of a hairdo bouncing beneath my nose, Pink is wonderfully raucous company.
When she was first launched on to the late-’90s R&B scene, dominated by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, the rebellious teen from Doylestown, Penn. — born Alecia Beth Moore — refused to remain packaged like her peers.
Given “the chance to fail” by her record label in 2001, she hired Linda Perry, the songwriter and childhood hero, to co-write rawer, rockier material for her second album. Pink proved them wrong: the resulting album, M!ssundaztood, became one of the biggest sellers of the decade.
Pink has now sold more than 50 million records, but with this latest album, she has said that RCA still sat her down for “the talk” about female pop artists over 35 not getting radio play. Especially female artists who had taken five years out to raise the kids. Yet Pink proved them wrong again. Beautiful Trauma racked up the biggest opening sales for a female artist at the time of its release since Beyoncé’s Lemonade in 2016.
Sweary, thoughtful, cocky and compassionate by turns, she says she’s never stopped feeling like a 12-year-old boy on the inside. Her brutal honesty — both in song and interviews — continues to set her apart. She’s bawled out her pain over her parents’ divorce, her nearfatal drug overdose at 15, and her tempestuous relationship with Carey Hart, her motocross rider husband. She recently revealed that the couple had gone a year without having sex.
Today she tells me: “A rude woman came at me last night and said that must be awful. It had never happened to her.” She sighs. “I felt a bit defensive. It WAS an embarrassing thing to say. It was an embarrassing thing to go through. But it was real. I’m not afraid of giving my truth, because some other woman somewhere is afraid something is wrong with her because her husband doesn’t want to have sex with her. And I want her to know that’s not the case. In my experience, you do the f------ work (on your relationship) and it can be good again.”
Willow, her six-year-old daughter and Jameson, her 11-month-old son, are upstairs with their dad. She regularly tours with them all, posting pictures of herself using a breast pump before shows. The rebel has become a role model.
Although she admits motherhood did, initially, have an impact on her natural fearlessness, she refused to be diminished by the role. “I rode my motorcycle until I was seven and a half months pregnant and I’m sure I got some very strange looks from people.
“But as soon as I had Willow the voice came on. I thought: I don’t wanna ride motorcycles again. Then another part of me went: No, screw that. That isn’t happening to you. And I got back on that motorcycle the second it didn’t hurt to sit down.”
She worries that childhood is “too easy for kids and too hard for parents” these days. “... I grew up with nothing and I think it’s important for kids to earn their own stripes.”
She also fears for the wider world. “I remember being in third grade and this kid, Megan, saying she wanted to be the president. That word, president, was such a huge, respected, holier-than-thou thing. I can’t get past the idea that for some kids this is their first idea of a president.”
She has hope. “I have a lot of friends in AA, and I’ve learned that rock bottom is the catalyst for change and I believe that great things can happen from desperation, from the need for survival. For me, the biggest recent change has been women supporting women.”