‘Beautiful Trauma,’
Welcome back, Pink.
In a pop-music landscape teeming with petty feuds and feeble attempts at reinvention, Pink stands out as one of our most consistently entertaining and forthright stars — a fact that holds true on her seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma ( eeeg out of four).
In the five years since her last effort, 2012’s hit-spawning The Truth About Love, the defiant singer/songwriter ( born Alecia Moore) has largely stayed out of the limelight, playfully lending her songs to movies Alice Through the Looking Glass and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and raising two kids with motocross racer husband Carey Hart.
Pink, 38, tells USA TODAY she spent the gap between albums just “living a normal life,” which imbues her new music with achingly relatable anecdotes about marriage, family and getting older. While it doesn’t have as many obvious radio singles as her 2002 breakout Mizzundaztood or 2008 “breakup” album Funhouse, Beautiful Trauma peels back the layers on an artist who’s more confident and comfortable than she has ever been.
Much of the 13track album seems to be a reflection on her tumultuous relationship with Hart, which has been marked by breakups, a separation and kiss-off songs along the way.
The soaring Whatever You Want starts as another indignant middle finger to a lover, before Pink confesses her devotion and desire to work things out. On Better Life, she gets candid about the façade of domestic bliss (“I can’t shake the feeling that you picture a better life, a better wife”), and the vocally stunning You Get My Love is one of her most emotion- ally raw songs yet.
With the exceptions of the rootsy I Am Here and dancefloor-ready What About Us — the album’s inspiring but generic first single — Pink doesn’t make any dramatic shifts in her sound, once again teaming with super-producers Max Martin and Shellback and bringing in a few fresh faces, including Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff and Tobias Jesso Jr.
Unlike similar efforts from Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga this past year, Beautiful Trauma and its stripped-back arrangements let Pink’s voice and lyrics shine. On the sparse Revenge with Eminem, she breaks out her trademark sardonic, saucy humor as she jauntily spurns an ex, and later gets wistful about childhood and being a mom on Barbies over a strumming guitar.
Nearly 20 years into her career, Pink is the rare pop star who has aged gracefully while also seeming ageless — reliably coloring Beautiful Trauma with the same brand of fierce, wise and empowering anthems that continue to strike a chord with fans.
Download: Beautiful Trauma, But We Lost It, Better Life