PINK - Seeing Red

Outspoken, outrageous, and opinionated, Pink is the brash and defiant pop star who lectured the British Royal Family on animal rights, took a controversial swipe at vapid celebrity culture, publicly criticized George W. Bush, and continues
to inspire legions of women all over the world to be themselves.

At 30, she has built a widely successful singing career that has generated 23 million album sales and won her two Grammy Awards and five MTV Music Video Awards. She’s currently in the middle of a world tour which has broken box office records in Australia and is one of the highest grossing concert series this year, ahead of Coldplay, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé.

But her brand of infectious rock-oriented pop is more than just catchy melodies and punky persona—she has something to say, too. Whether she’s laundering her dirty linen in public in “Family Portrait,” where she raged about her parent’s divorce when she was a child, or attracting controversy with “Dear Mr. President,” an open letter to George W. Bush asking him how he really feels about controversial subjects, Pink bares her soul and shares her innermost feelings.

A colorful background

Pink was born Alecia Beth Moore in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in 1979, and was later raised in Philadelphia. At age 8, her parents, Judith and Jim, divorced. She responded by turning to pen and paper to express how she was feeling. A rebellious teenager, she was smoking and drinking by the time she was 13, had piercings and tattoos, and was experimenting with drugs, including heroin. Her mother couldn’t cope and so sent her to live with her father, a politically active Vietnam veteran whom Pink has called “Mr. Cause” because he was always standing up for important rights and issues. At 14 Pink was singing in clubs, and at 16 she joined the R&B group Choice. They signed to LaFace Records but quickly floundered, making little impact on the charts. However, the label saw star quality
in Pink and kept her on, where for a short spell she sang backing vocals for numerous acts including Diana Ross.

Getting the party started

Her party started in 2000 with her first album, Can’t Take Me Home, on which she co-wrote half the tracks. It went double platinum in the U.S., and sold five million albums worldwide, spawning two U.S. top ten singles and establishing her alongside new teenage singing sensations Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. It was very much an R&B record, but following its success, Pink was determined to move her music in a different direction. She did not want to be thrown into the same pot as the other women who burst onto the scene at roughly the same time, and she was keen to be seen as a more serious songwriter.

It was no small feat that she somehow managed to convince her record company bosses that the smartest move was to let her follow her instincts. According to the singer-songwriter, they already had an inkling of how strong willed she can be. On becoming a recording artist she was supposed to take media training and etiquette classes. She thought the latter were an insult to her mother, and so didn’t bother to attend. However, she did turn up for the media training, but only for it to be abandoned after a few minutes with her tutor despairing that she would not listen. Pink does not like being told what to say, or how to say it.

A megastar is born

For her second album, the rockier and edgier Missundaztood, Pink teamed up with one of her musical heroes, ex-4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry, who had a hit in 1993 with “What’s Up.” The album is noticeably more personal than her debut offering. In “Don’t Let Me Get Me” she opines, “Everyday I fight a war against the mirror/I can’t take the person starin’ back at me/I’m a hazard to myself.” The album’s other hit singles include the anthemic “Get the Party Started” and “Just Like a Pill.” She also took a pop at the corporate music industry and recounts her battles with record label boss L.A. Reid. “L.A. told me you’ll be a pop star/All you have to change is everything you are.” At 19, this newcomer to the music industry had found her voice and taken creative control of her career, determined never to be a person that someone else wanted her to be. Music executives wondered about the reaction that would greet their loose cannon, but they needn’t have nervously chomped on so many fingernails. The album sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and she was well on her way to mega stardom.

Strong political views

Pink is openly political, believing that celebrities can use their exalted positions in powerful ways, if they choose to. Although she gets frustrated that sometimes her views are sensationalized by the tabloid press, she is irritated that the public can sometimes patronize opinionated pop stars, viewing them merely as pampered celebrities jumping onto fashionable causes. But just like Angelina Jolie or Bono, she means what she says when she wants to bring attention to an issue. Just because she’s a singer doesn’t mean that her head is removed from the real world. The Grammy Award-winning, platinum-selling superstar has never shied away from speaking her mind, and she wants to bring attention to things she feels need to be said and talked about. She is a force to be reckoned with.

Dear Mr. President

On her fourth studio album, I’m Not Dead, she denounced the U.S. government’s
involvement in Iraq on a track called “Dear Mr. President.” She has often said that it is one of the most important songs she has ever written, and it includes the lines, “How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?/How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?/How do you walk with your head held high?/Can you even look me in the eye/And tell me why?” Although concerned about making her feelings public on such a sensitive issue—because she understood that not everyone would agree with her point of view—she couldn’t help herself, believing that if a cause is worthy enough she must make her voice heard. Perhaps it is something she inherited from her politically active father, who raised his daughter to stand up for herself, advising her “to thine own self be true.”

“Dear Mr. President” was also particularly brave in light of the Dixie Chicks controversy of 2003. The county music group had received death threats and hate mail, and their concerts were boycotted when they were accused of being unpatriotic after lead vocalist Natalie Maines said on the eve of the war, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

Bashing airhead celebrities

Although “Dear Mr. President” attracted some attention, it was nothing like the controversy that surrounded “Stupid Girls,” in which the singer blasted the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. “When I was in high school if you were a slut it was bad news,” she told MTV in 2008. “Now, if you have a sex tape you’re cool. That’s so gross to me and unfortunate.”  She says she wrote the song in response to a popular culture being taken over by the tabloids, where women who dumb-down get all the attention. It is a scathing attack. She was angry at the lack of positive role models for young girls, with women only appearing on the front pages because of their latest boob job, shoe purchase, or arrest charge.

The lyrics are inspired. “What happened to the dreams of a girl president/She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent.” And then later on in the song, “I’m so glad that I’ll never fit in/That will never be me/Outcasts and girls with ambition/That’s what I wanna see.” She wanted her fans to understand that they can make their own decisions and choices in life. “Once you figure out what respect tastes like, it tastes better than attention. But you have to get there,” she told the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. The song’s words are powerful and insightful, but it was the video that really attracted the most reaction. In it Pink lampoons empty-headed celebrities by driving while applying her lipstick. She runs over a pedestrian and then proceeds to check that her makeup is still perfect. There is also a scene in which she sticks a toothbrush down her throat to mimic bulimia. Several Hollywood noses were put out of joint.

A strong voice

Like her hero Madonna, Pink is a strong woman who plays by her own rules, and she has an uncanny habit of alienating authority. How many pop stars do you know who would berate Prince William for hunting animals? She was invited to perform at his twenty-first birthday bash, but turned it down and challenged him over his views. “I was happy to hear that I was your first choice to play at your twenty-first birthday bash—then disgusted to learn that you hunt animals for fun and that you purposely rammed a spear through a tiny deer in Africa.” She has also written to the Queen asking her why the bearskins of the Buckingham Palace guards couldn’t be made out of a synthetic material. Although a spokesman for the prince denied that the deer incident ever took place, the singer has yet to receive any replies from Buckingham Palace, which she publicly declared was “a bit rude.”

Pink is a vegetarian and a high profile campaigner for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and has lent her voice to many of their campaigns, including protests against Kentucky Fried Chicken. At one of her concerts in Paris she called for an international boycott of the Australian wool industry for a practice known as mulesing that involves skin being taken from a sheep’s buttocks to reduce the incidence of parasitic diseases. She also suggested to Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, that she run anti-fur ads in her magazine. The request was declined.

A lifelong animal lover, Pink also works behind the scenes for PETA, writing to companies and individuals she believes are exploiting animals, such as KFC and Siegfried and Roy. And she’s not shy about criticizing fellow performers such as Beyoncé for wearing fur. She also called Kanye West an “idiot” for saying that there should be more fur on display at a fashion show he attended.

Revealing more than ever

Pink has stated that her fifth studio album, Funhouse, is her most revealing yet. Released in October 2008, it scored her first ever number one single on the U.S. Billboard Chart. Although it is not being billed as a heartbreak album, some of the songs deal with the separation from her husband, motocross star Carey Hart. They were married in 2006, after Pink proposed to him during one of his races. She had a marker pen and scribbled, “Will you marry me?” on a board and held it up in front of the grandstands. They split up in 2008. “I guess I just lost my husband,” begins her chart-topping single, “So what? I’m still a rock star!” Despite the separation Hart still appeared in the song’s video, where both are seen apparently making fun of their relationship.

Elsewhere on the album she appears painfully honest about her emotions. “It’s like letting down the armor and admitting I’m human. I’m a girl. We all want to be loved and love. That’s all we want,” she explained on her official website. “‘Please Don’t Leave Me’ is also kind of funny though. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’m an a**hole, but love me anyway.’ I’m trying to be better. We’re all a work in progress.”

Despite the bitterness and the anger the couple still remained great friends. They never divorced and were often seen out together, and in May of this year the singer revealed in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that they are back together and dating again. Which must make it kind of curious when he’s in the audience watching her belt out lines like, “I got my rock moves and I don’t need you/And guess what I’m havin’ more fun.”

Pop powerhouse

The Funhouse world tour to support the album is her most successful yet. In Australia she played 56 dates in four months, breaking most of the country’s touring records. More than 600,000 fans flocked to see the pop powerhouse—an even more impressive figure when you bear in mind that Australia has a population of 22 million. According to figures posted by Pollstar Worldwide Tours, the tour grossed $50.8 million for the first half of 2009. She kicked off the North American leg of her sell-out show in Seattle on September 15, and the tour includes stops in Los Angeles, Toronto, Boston, and New York. It is by far the most physically demanding show that she has ever been involved in, and includes singing a song upside down on a trapeze, 65 feet above the stage. She continually makes the point that she does not lip sync like other artists, nor does she rely on the backing vocalists to bolster her sound, even when performing gravity-defying feats.

Role modeling

In her own words, Pink’s ambition from a young age was “to be famous and piss people off.” She has achieved both. Initially her anger was directed at the whole world, but these days it is more focused and directed. She wants to inspire people to be individuals and stand up for what they believe in, and be who they are. “I wouldn’t advise anyone to take the path I’ve chosen but as far being a strong woman, and being assertive and being ambitious and being a fighter and being comfortable in my own body and not society’s idea of beautiful then absolutely, I’ll carry that torch,” she told one interviewer. “But as far as being perfect, heck no, I’m not perfect.”

Every week Pink receives thousands of letters and e-mails from women who let her know how she has helped them, whether they’ve been inspired to go to the gym, be a strong female, or come out. But the most powerful and touching messages, and the ones that mean the most to her, are from young girls and women who write to say “‘You make me want to be like me’, instead of ‘I want to be like you.’” –P.A.