MUM’S GOING BACK TO WORK
She offered to give up touring if it would make her children happy but after family discussions and tears, P!nk is hitting the road to perform her new album on an 18-month world tour
There have been “teary conversations” in the Moore-Hart household since pop superstar P!nk flagged she was returning to her day job. During one family meeting, their matriarch offered to quit. Willow and Jameson Hart, and their dad Carey, have become accustomed to having Alecia Moore, as she is known to family and friends, all to themselves over the past three years. They have enjoyed camping adventures and motorcycle rides, mastered baking sourdough and played dress-ups. They shared hardship and heartbreak. P!nk and her son Jameson, 6, both contracted Covid in April 2020; the asthmatic singer became so ill she updated her will. Then her father Jim Moore, a Vietnam vet, her manager in her early pop years, and her rock, died in 2021 aged 75.
So when “Mumma” opened the discussions about returning to perform for her loyal legion of fans on the Summer Carnival world tour, rumoured to land in Australia in early 2024, she told 11-year-old Willow she would pull the pin on their travelling gypsy family tour life if it was all too much.
“That’s the one area in which I think
I’m excelling at life by trying to make everybody happy, or at least make everybody feel seen in my family. I have literally routed this tour around everything important to all three members of my family and to the best of my ability,” the 43-year-old superstar says.
“We’ve had teary conversations about it. I talked to Willow and I said,
‘You know I’m going to be touring and
I know that you’re getting older and you have things that you are interested in and I don’t honour your childhood less than I honour my adult choices. And I also want you to understand that I love what I do. And I worked really hard to get here. And there’s a handful of people in the world that get to do what I do, and I won’t apologise for it …and I think I help people sometimes. But if you want me to quit, I’ll quit tomorrow because there’s nothing more important than you. I don’t want to, but I will.’
“And she says, ‘I don’t want you to quit, Mumma, I don’t want you to quit.’”
So P!nk’s millions of fans can be grateful for Willow’s willingness to share her mum with the world again via her ninth album Trustfall, and the dozens of Summer Carnival shows she will perform throughout the world over the next 18 months.
The Beautiful Trauma chart slayer and concert box office queen has sold more than 60 million albums and a billion dollars’ worth of tickets over a 23-year career; it’s a monumentally successful day job.
Her instincts for what makes great pop art are rooted in her gut and her heart. She
WHAT SONGS DO I GO TO? IT’S THE ONES THAT SPEAK FOR ME, THAT SOOTHE ME, THAT COMFORT ME OR HELP ME SCREAM
exorcises demons, campaigns for social justice and gets the party started in equal measure on all her records.
As she fashioned the songs for Trustfall at the family’s Santa Barbara ranch during the long pandemic pause on touring, her family members were her litmus test.
Former motocross champion and bike builder husband Carey is considered with his feedback, Jameson loves everything Mum sings and Willow, now a pop star in her own right thanks to the mother and daughter’s 2021 hit Cover Me In Sunshine, is “more discerning”.
“I always know if I hear them a couple of weeks later humming the melody, that it’s a good one,” she says.
The album’s first single, the discotastic, feelgood, double-negative tongue twister Never Gonna Not Dance Again, passed the hum test.
“It’s like my formula kind of song, but I don’t give a shit because by the end of it, I’m so happy that I don’t care,” she says.
It is guaranteed to make the cut for her Summer Carnival set list, and you can bet she will be replicating her roller-skating skills on tour – the impressive moves which have destroyed the wooden floors in her home and feature in the Never Gonna Not Dance Again video.
But P!nk will have to muster all her strength to sing the album’s opening song, the heartachingly beautiful piano ballad, When I Get There. The musical love letter to her late father ponders his afterlife: “Is there a bar up there where you’ve got a favourite chair, where you sit with friends and talk about the weather?”
She knows it will launch a million tears among those grieving lost loved ones, just as so many other songs from her extensive repertoire, like F…kin’ Perfect and Try, have provoked fans to unashamed ugly cries at her shows.
“Oh yeah. That song. I played that one for my best friend, she lost her mom, and she’s still not speaking to me,” she says.
“I don’t know how I’m going to be (singing it). I remember way back when my brother (Jason) got orders for deployment and I couldn’t sing Dear Mr. President. I guess I’ve cried many times on stage, it wouldn’t be anything new.
“I need those songs just as much as anybody else. What songs do I go to? It’s the ones that speak for me, that soothe me, that comfort me or help me scream. And so when I sit down to write something, it’s like, what needs to get out?”
Pop stardom has afforded her a platform to not only entertain but exercise her voice for social justice. She is a prolific online campaigner for LGBTQIA+ and children’s rights. Fuelled with rage, she wrote and released the song Irrelevant in response to the US Supreme Court overturning the Roe vs Wade decision last year. She is a fierce ally of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The uncompromising social warrior has fielded death threats and has around-the-clock security. She remains undaunted by the online hate and her wickedly funny yet brutal burns of trolls have proven as entertaining as her death-defying acrobatics above the concert stage.
If only she would post the video of the side-splittingly hilarious prank she pulled on the stalker who kept stealing the Black Lives Matter placards she displayed at the entrance to her ranch.
“I put up nature cams, and I found out who it was, and I sent 100 signs to his house. And I said, ‘I see that you support Black Lives Matter, and I really appreciate your support. So I’ve sent you 100 signs. All you had to do is ask. And I’ve donated $10,000 in your name to Black Lives Matter. And they thank you very much. They’ll be sending you a personalised thank you any day now,’” she says.
The two of us howl with laughter as she reveals the clincher.
“The third time (she replaced the placard), I put on the outside of the sign Vaseline, horse shit and glitter. You can get rid of horse shit, you can get rid of Vaseline but you never can get rid of glitter. Oh, I am so bad. But that was a really good day,” she says.
Her graceful turns in the air in the recent video for the album’s title track Trustfall confirm P!nk will be back in the air for the Summer Carnival shows. The woman who has pioneered high-flying acrobatics for the pop concert had a genius idea to push the envelope for her next production. It got canned by her team.
“I wanted to do a magic carpet that was flown by drones, but they wouldn’t let me do it because they’re hackable and somebody could like, fly me away. Just the visual of that made me laugh for so long, like that’s how I get stolen,” she says.
Just as she did on the Beautiful Trauma, her daughter may make an onstage cameo when she joins the tour in between her own commitments, which include starring in her school’s mid-year theatre production. The proud mum recently posted Willow nailing Olivia Rodrigo’s The Rose during her first recital. The 11 year old helped P!nk rehearse the lyrics of Hopelessly Devoted To You for her stunning tribute to Olivia Newton-John at the American Music Awards in November. Willow knew the song intimately having performed Grease at school. Newton-John lived near P!nk in Santa Barbara, and they shared a connection via legendary Australian manager Roger Davies. He managed Newton-John in the ’80s and has steered P!nk’s career since 2001. “Olivia was an absolute light bulb walking around the earth … she was just a kind, kind woman,” she says. “And singing that song, because her voice is so unique, so distinct, so sweet, it’s hard. I can’t sing it like that. I have to sing it like me. That night was hard for Roger, too. It was an emotional night.”
A recent string of unforgettable, pinch-me nights have prompted the always striving and driven entertainer to take stock. She was asked to induct Dolly Parton to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November and will join Brandi Carlile, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Elton John and more legends on the country queen’s upcoming Rock Star covers album. P!nk was also tapped by Dave Grohl and hit maker producer Greg Kurstin to join the annual Hanukkah Sessions last month, their December online series covering songs by Jewish singers. They sang P!nk’s Get The Party Started; she forgot some of the words and says she sometimes struggles to recall lyrics post Covid. But standing on those stages gave her licence to reflect that after more than 20 years at the top of her game, she can hold her own in the company of legends. “There’s not really stars like there used to be, like Dolly or David Bowie or George Michael or Olivia NewtonJohn or Tina Turner or Cher or Sade. Now there’s just a ton of artists that put out a ton of songs,” she says. “I’m 43 years old, right? I’ve had a record deal since I was 16, and I’m inducting Dolly Parton into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and hanging out with Dave Grohl. And I don’t do that shit a lot. I’ve never done that stuff a lot. I don’t hang out with people or go to cool things a lot. So I’m just kind of standing around like, ‘f--k, this is f-king awesome. I think I made it.’ I think I’ve hit that mark. And I was the least likely to succeed, right?”
I ask if that was her high school yearbook description. “No, my yearbook was most likely to be behind bars in 10 years.”