Try This
Pink
2003: Arista 52139-2
This was a gift from my sister around 2004, I think. I had mixed feelings about it when I received it…where to start on that?? The visuals were an obstacle rather than a vehicle, to me: not only am I personally turned off by tattoos and piercings, but their presence here was like a garish crutch. But really, haven’t we seen all this before, say, 30 years ago? Can anyone say “Wendy O Williams?” Only Pink (in these photos) appears to still be outgrowing her baby fat and has another decade, maybe two, of living and growing until she’s in her right skin.
Still, I gave it a shot—my sister doesn’t send a CD my way unless she’s pretty sure that some of what chimed for her will hit a similar chord with me. And while it’s far from being on my Desert Island Discs list, and I rarely even think to play it, I acknowledged right away that it was downright refreshing to hear a singer (as opposed to, say, a rapper) using the word “fuck” as it’s commonly used in everyday city parlance. There’s not a lot of depth or substance in these lyrics, and they’re going to suffer badly in years to come from their “so of the moment” cultural nature, but it’s not all completely dismissable somehow. And she certainly has energy of some considerable voltage, which is impressive in its own way.
I kept my opinion on Pink open to further consideration, because of this, and in 2006 I was rewarded with a glimpse of the latter half of her “Stupid Girls” video (from her 2006 album I’m Not Dead), which brought a wry smile or two to my face and earned my approval for voicing so succinctly a frustration I’ve felt myself in the past 20 years or so. When I heard in late 2006 that Pink was collaborating with Annie Lennox on a track, I thought “well, I’m not even gonna speculate, although it seems like both a logical and an ill-advised idea” (and hopefully it won’t have any overtones of that Madonna/Spears thing). To my surprise, Pink herself gave the matter the appropriate handling in a January 2007 interview, saying “I’m not talking about it, I don’t know what she wants to say about it yet…I’ll let her let the cat out of the bag. But it’s very exciting.”
I can let all the style-heavy clutter slide for an artist who can respect the wishes of someone as controlling (-in-a-good-way) as Lennox in a collaboration. And I’ll probably get myself a copy of I’m Not Dead, too.
Comments © 2007 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.