P!nk is beloved for her no-holds-barred honesty, even when it comes to her own music. In a new Los Angeles Times interview, the singer was asked to rate her best and worst singles and, without hesitation, she picked her 2001 Missundaztood song, “Get the Party Started,” which hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
She also tagged 2008’s No. 1 hit “So What” from Funhouse, which she said was “fun from start to finish — writing it, singing it, performing it, the video,” also crediting the high-energy track with reuniting her with husband Carey Hart after their earlier separation.
She also got really real about the songs she wished she’d never recorded, which include her 2013 love hurts anthem “True Love,” which features the lyrics, “Sometimes I hate every single stupid word you say/ Sometimes I wanna slap you in your whole face/ There’s no one quite like you, you push all my buttons down/ I know life would suck without you/ At the same time, I wanna hug you/ I wanna wrap my hands around your neck.”
Why that one? “Because it’s mean. Carey’s got thick skin, but I owe him a love song,” she said of the song whose chorus has her singing, “True love, true love/ It must be true love/ Nothin’ else can break my heart like/ True love, true love/ It must be true love/ No one else can break my heart like you.”
Worse yet, though, she said, was the minute-long “We’ve Got Scurvy” from the 2009 SpongeBob’s Greatest Hits album, in which she yarrrs, “Our gums are black, our teeth are falling out/ We’ve got spots on our backs, so give it up and shout/ We’ve got scurvy, we need some vitamin C/ We’ve got scurvy, we need a lemon tree.”
“I wish I never did that,” she said. “That was a real mistake.”
Asked if she’d ever make a full-on country record, P!nk noted that she has made country songs, pointing to tracks she’s recorded with Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney, with the latter team-up on “Setting the World on Fire,” hitting No. 1 at country radio that year. But a whole country album? “Nah,” laughed the singer who has dabbled in pop, R&B, dance and rock over the years. “I don’t do whole albums of anything.”
With just three dates left on the U.S. swing of her high-flying Summer Carnival tour, P!nk told the Times that she “100%” thinks she’s a better live performer than recording artist, despite her 36 Billboard Hot 100 charting hit singles over the past 28 years.
“Because live is messy. It’s life, it’s gritty, it’s authentic — it’s unrehearsed,” said the singer whose meticulously plotted acrobatic moves and high-wire work are a staple of her shows. “I mean, we rehearse to a certain extent for safety. But you never know what’s gonna happen. And I’m never in my head. The second I step onstage, I’m in my heart, I’m in my body. There’s no other place that I operate — as a Virgo, as a mother, as the most responsible person I know — like the stage. It’s where I live.”
And though the former gymnast seems to effortlessly soar above the crowd, she said she is “absolutely” scared every time, which is why she started doing it. “I’m afraid of heights, and I don’t want to be afraid,” she explained. “I’ve been in some situations that don’t feel good. I wonder every night if my bungees are gonna work. But it’s a cool way to go if they don’t.”
With so many stars putting down roots for residencies in Las Vegas, P!nk said she would consider her own stay-put (“when I do Vegas, it’ll be the best show Vegas ever saw”), but she hasn’t agreed yet because her children are still young enough to join her on the road. “Vegas is something I can do when they don’t want to be with me anymore. Willow’s getting close,” she said of her 12-year-old daughter; she and Hart also have a six-year-old son, Jameson.
As for whether she was surprised by the recent dust-up around Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner’s sexist, racist comments suggesting that women and Black artists weren’t as “articulate” or interesting the white men he interviewed for his recent book, she was not.
“Misogyny and racism are so prevalent today. But they’re the dinosaurs, and they’re on their way out,” she said of men like the 77-year-old Wenner, whose comments got him booted from the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “I don’t know how successfully they passed down their poison.”
