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Pink

18:55 / 17.12.02

I saw Pink at a big pop festival on the weekend, and she was far and away the best performer I've ever seen. She had so much presence even her bad songs - and there were a few (i.e. most of the stuff from Missundaztood and, even worse, a 4 Non Blondes cover) - were completely entrancing and amazing. Afterwards I was speechless and could only hyperventilate and point at things, including the Pink T-shirt I had to buy even though it was ugly, the wrong size, and more than I could afford.

Let me tell you what she was wearing. She had bare feet, baggy, low-slung white pants, a studded black leather belt, white fuck-me wrist band, and best of all, a VB T-shirt that had been cut up and turned into a slinky singlet. (VB, if you don't know, is the best, most popular Australian beer, and completely unfashionable - cool people just hate it.) She had a big black mohawk and just generally looked AMAZING.

Her set started with Get The Party Started, then a bland album track, then the aforementioned cover, then another bland one and then - the highlight - There You Go, the best track from her first album. I was so excited I almost peed my pants! I have been ecstatically happy ever since, just charged up with the energy of it. She did a few more of the recent singles and a Janis Joplin memory and was entirely charming as she bantered with the audience.

Fascinating fact: On 'There You Go', instead of "all it sounds like to me is new games" she sang "all it sounds like to me is bullshit".

So I would like to talk about Pink, anything, whatever. Your favourite song, anecdote, photo or whatever.

I'll tell you my favourite Pink moment. It's in a track from the first album, I don't know which one, and in the background she says something about how when they were in Pizza Hut he said she was his sister. In Pizza Hut! Imagine you are in Pizza Hut at the same time as Pink. Imagine that, at any moment, you might be part of a scene which will one day be commemorated by a huge international popstar with whom, once upon a time, you unknowingly shared public space. Doesn't that just make everything better?

23:01 / 17.12.02

My daughter, who is six, won third-place in a lip-sync contest this summer, boogying around to "Get The Party Started." I colored her hair pinky-lavender for the event, using this spray-on stuff with a horrible floral scent. She wore pink bike shorts and a pink Powerpuff Girls T-shirt, and she rocked the goddam house.

The 4 Non Blondes cover is not a huge surprise: former 4NB singer Linda Perry wrote, produced, and played all the instruments on "Get The Part Started," and possibly other tracks on Missundaztood.

23:11 / 17.12.02

Hmm... Pink. Hmm...

Just Like A Pill irritated the hell out of me, but Get The Party Started and some other one that I can't remember the name of were quite good...a nd Family Portrait started out alrite, but the sound cut out on HITS after about 40 seconds, so I have no idea how it goes after that... I'm warming to Pink as a person, it must be said,, and she did have a moustache and armpit hair in one photo shoot, but I still can't shake the feeling that, well... don't we have Gwen Steffani for all this?

And yeh, Linda Perry's Pink's mentor and did the whole album. Now she's well loved and everyone wants he pushing buttons.

Oh, and her nipples are freaky. I have no idea why so many people I know like her nipples.

XXII:X:II = XXX

23:24 / 17.12.02

I have a photo clipped out of Entertainment Weekly tacked to my bulletin board at work, showing Pink (with black hair), Lisa Marie Presley and Avril Lavigne. None of them are smiling, Pink is sticking out her tongue, Avril's scrunching up her nose, Lisa Marie has a babydoll shirt reading "Bite Me," all three are wearing white shirts displaying navel nudity, and it's one of the hottest images I'd ever seen. I suppose now I should be hidden from polite society.

23:47 / 17.12.02

Tell me about her nipples, pin.

I did know that about Linda Perry, by the way, and it doesn't change the following facts: 4 Non Blondes were shit, almost all the tracks on Missundaztood were shit, but Pink was such an awesome presence it didn't matter.

Can't Take Me Home was much better, although Get The Party Started is probably better than anything on it. (Similar, in my opinion, to the relations between Country Grammar, Hot In Herre, and Nellyville.)

Does anyone know who she's seeing at the moment, and/or any other good gossip? I am extremely Pink ignorant. Although I do know Linda Perry bought her her first lapdance.

09:31 / 18.12.02

She's called "pink", not because of her hair, but because, when she showed some guy her vagina, he went "My God! It's pink!". Her dog's called Fucker, but she had to rename it to something less rude now that her Dad looks after it when she's on tour, but I can't remember what to. She used to offer her teachers tickets to her gigs in the future, if they'd let her off homework now. Erm... I can't remember anything else. Oh! The tattoo on the back of her neck is the barcoode from M!zzundastood.

And did you want me to describe her nipples to you, or were you agreeing? I can't really describe them they're... weird. But her lesbian PA says that they're why lesbians like her. Which doesn't make any sense, because they're funny lookin'.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:40 / 18.12.02

Why the fuck do NME like her? Family Portrait is the most appalling 'pity me, pity my life!' piece of shit since... her last song. This 'sub-Jesus Christ opening my wrists so you can see that I bleed too' (I wanna be some body else;don't you sometimes feel a bit disconnected from things Just Like a Pill Ugh, headache! Family Portrait; Waaaaah, my divorcing parents FUCKED UP MY LIFE!) is extremely tiresome. She is the girl from the 'Diary of a Manic Street Preachers Fan' in the Melody Maker, all grown up, feeling all 'intensely intense'.

'Get the Party Started' was great though.

09:47 / 18.12.02

Domonic Manohan and The Face seem to be quite enamoured too. Journalism- it's the new advertising!

Erm... I am warming to her as a non-song writting entity, but yeh, she sucks at times. And she seems to think no one else was making depressing songs. The fuck?? But someone else please confiurm this in my tiny little mind- she really is Gwen Steffani Lite, isn't she? Or have I gone mad? (Obviously she's now Gwen Rosendale, or whatever Talentless Bush Monkey Boy's name is... Which is bad so all the levels God mad the concept of "bad" to express)

11:09 / 18.12.02

I'm deeply suspicious of Pink ..

I know little about her, as here in my impenetrable indie ghetto I don't listen to daytime radio, watch Top of the Pops or read the tabloids*, but what I do know is;

a)she appears to be the living embodiment of the "punk rock as topshop fashion accessory" meme

b)she's a successful pop star who's trying to go all rock, by swearing and having songs with guitar riffs and stuff, which is ALWAYS a bad idea. Whilst her radio-friendly pop might be - indeed, probably is - really cool, radio-freindly pop-rock, by it's very nature, rocks about as much as the Osmonds.

*I'm not boasting of my ignorance, it's more that I just don't have time..

23:57 / 02.01.03

She's called "pink", not because of her hair, but because, when she showed some guy her vagina, he went "My God! It's pink!".

He was black. I think there're a handful other reasons, as writ in Rolling Stone, 4-5 months back... Will search.

00:11 / 03.01.03

Search failed. If you start whining and refuse to adapt, I might just check out my library.

Brigade du jour

02:40 / 03.01.03

Why would anyone be surprised at a vagina being pink? What the hell colour did he expect it to be?

05:02 / 03.01.03

What color indeed?!?!?

Family Portrait is the most appalling 'pity me, pity my life!' piece of shit since... her last song.

'Get the Party Started' was great though.

I had no idea who she was when I first heard "Get the Party Started" in, of all places, the comic shop. I loved it for awhile, despite my usual disdain for music labelled "pop." Great stuff! Couldn't get enough of it! Then I saw her on some talk show doing her horribly overwrought self-pity anthem. Good GOD! It's over-acting on the scale of William fucking Shatner! Now I hate her.

00:56 / 07.01.03

I actually hate VB because it's a really watery beer.

m.

A

05:10 / 07.01.03

threadrot- Yeah, VB's crap. Probably my least favourite. I don't know if it's uncool in other parts of the country, but it's pretty hip around these parts.

Hobo Humping Slobo-babe

20:47 / 07.01.03

?? Any truth to the rumors that she is a *post op?*

Matthew Fluxington

22:02 / 07.01.03

My official stance on Pink is this: the bootlegs that mix "Get The Party Started" with the music of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" or The Clash's "Rock The Casbah" are fantabulous, otherwise the song annoys the hell out of me, and makes me think of the gym chain that uses it in their commercials in New York. "Just Like A Pill" and "Don't Let Me Get Me" are both decent pop songs, and sound pretty much exactly like late 80s/early 90s Cher given an Alanis makeover. "Family Portrait" is entirely dreadful, as is "My Vietnam". I don't really mind Pink, but watching her on tv in interviews and such is really disturbing - she always talks as if she has just received a massive head trauma, like a punchdrunk boxer.

23:22 / 07.01.03

Incidentally, in every interview she does she tells a different story about why she's called Pink.