P!nk has always been a fighter. Whether it’s rising up for women’s reproductive rights or slamming body-shaming trolls on Twitter, the “Just Like Fire” singer is always there to use her platform to speak for the voiceless — a trait, she says, she got from her father.
“My dad was my first God. He was a fighter, a boxer, a scrapper, street fighter. He never walks away from a good fight,” the star tells Billboard before the Los Angeles No Kid Hungry Dinner on Thursday night (April 27), where she was honored as a National Champion for her longtime work for the No Kid Hungry organization to ensure children across the country have access to food every day.
“He was also military, and we did car washes every weekend and I was marching on Washington at three years old. My stepmom was an army Vietnam nurse. She was partially responsible for erecting the nurses’ monument in Washington, D.C., and my mom’s an ER nurse,” P!nk continued of her “civic minded” family that inspired her from a young age. “Everybody but me was of service. I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I want to be a social worker,’ because I was a pretty messed up kid and my guidance counselor in junior high was the first adult that ever stuck up for me.”
While she didn’t turn out to be a social worker, she found that music was the perfect way for her to create a sense of human connection. “I love to sing and perform, and I figured out a way to make it matter to me and to make it more than just about selling songs,” she adds. “To, me it’s a life of trying to bring service into it, with being as honest as I can be about where I’ve been, what I’ve done, what I think and all my flaws and what I struggle with. So yeah, I think I was born this way.”
Her 10-year childhood hunger fight with No Kid Hungry began 10 years ago, when she watched the documentary, A Place at the Table, which displays the harrowing reality of three individuals trying to find adequate nutrition in different parts of the United States.
She was so moved by the documentary, she reached out to Billy Shore, the founder and executive chair of Share Our Strength, which is the parent organization for the No Kid Hungry campaign. The two met for coffee in Venice Beach, Calif., and according to Shore, it took “five minutes” before P!nk was dedicated to the cause. “She’s just so down,” Shore tells Billboard, adding that P!nk has taken part in all types of No Kid Hungry events over the years, and even had a booth setup with info about the campaign throughout her Beautiful Trauma tour.
“My favorite thing about what Billy said to me was that this is a solvable problem,” P!nk recalls of first meeting Shore. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I like solvable problems, because most problems feel completely overwhelming. We look at the world and we’re like, ‘What do we go to first? Is it climate change? Is it racial injustice? Like how do we fix that?’ So for this, they’re actually fixing. I mean, in the last 10 years alone, there are three million more kids getting school breakfast. Their moms have a little bit less to worry about.”
She continued, “That makes me want to cry. As a mom, I’ve got two kids, I would do anything to feed them,” before lovingly looking over at her 11-year-old daughter, Willow Hart, who was sweetly reading a book nearby while sipping on a Shirley Temple. “I’m really happy to have her here with me tonight to be able to see what we do, because she’s finally old enough to really understand something outside of bake sales,” P!nk added.
Later on in the night, both P!nk and Willow were all smiles while celebrating the evening’s honorees at the dinner, which included Chez Panisse founder and food activist Alice Waters; chef and cookbook author Sherry Yard; and popular home furnishings company Williams Sonoma, Inc.
The evening also included a dynamic live auction to support No Kid Hungry, as well as a special dining experience curated by renowned culinary legends Waters, Yard and Mary Sue Milliken in partnership with talented chefs across California.
To wrap up the evening, P!nk accepted her National Champion honor from beloved actor Jeff Bridges (“It’s not every day that Jeff Bridges pats you on the back and says, ‘Job well done,’” the singer tells Billboard with a laugh). She also treated attendees to a stripped-down, acoustic performance of a few of her hits, including “What About Us” and “F—in’ Perfect.”
“When we hit a wall, we knock it down. When there’s no path, we create one. When someone says it’s not possible, we show them how it is,” P!nk powerfully told the crowd of 400 people while accepting her honor, proving once again that she’ll never stop fighting for the causes she believes in.
