It’s not that anything’s gone particularly wrong in her current relationship, with Motocross champ Carey Hart. Pink’s just cranky. A healthy dose of obstinacy and attitude–and a maybe-not-so-healthy amount of anger–have made the 23-year-old Pink (born Alecia Moore) one of the current pop scene’s only credible anti-heroes. This isn’t just because of the juvenile-delinquent cool she projects in her glossy, MTV-tailored videos. Since her slickly crafted 2000 debut album, “Can’t Take Me Home,” she’s morphed from a teen-oriented novelty act–a white girl singing R&B–to a genre-jumping rebel whose cause is creative control. Pink’s new album, “Try This,” due in November, will be the best test yet of what she can do. On the 2001 “M!ssundaztood,” she chose the forgotten ’90s alt-rock singer Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes to co-write the record, and to everyone’s surprise but Pink’s, it worked. Her bouncy club number “Get the Party –Started” did exactly that: the CD went multiplatinum, and the mix of sassy hip-hop, sneering pop and prom-night balladry got Pink to the 2002 MTV awards for best pop and dance videos. Her acceptance speech? “I’m way too drunk for this.” But it was Pink’s painfully plainspoken tales of her dysfunctional family life, rough teen years and (you guessed it) struggles with a bland, corporate music industry that gave the album a stature beyond its lofty chart position.
On Pink’s hit single “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” she documented her battles with Arista-label head L. A. Reid. “L.A. told me you’ll be a pop star/All you have to change is everything you are.” Ultimately, though, she kept her head above the crowd of R&B and teen-pop singers by persuading Reid to let her follow her own instincts. “I was saying, ‘Look, you’ve been in the business for 20 years, but I’ve been a consumer for 20 years’,” Pink recalls. " ‘I’ve stood in the lines. I’m the one the bouncers kick out. I’m closer to the streets. You think 14-year-olds are still playing with Barbies? The world has changed: 14-year-olds are cooking dinner for their parents these days. And when I was that age I was on drugs, running away from home’."
That would be Doylestown, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. Alecia’s mother worked as an ER nurse; her father, an ex military man, sold insurance and taught Pink how to fight. “He’s a full-contact-karate, Vietnam-vet, guerrilla-warfare-type dude,” Pink says. “He taught me how to shoot guns, how to use knives, how to break wrists. He would clothesline me coming around the corner–you know, chest-deck me–put me on my back, then tell me, ‘You should always be on your toes!’ When boys chased girls in kindergarten, no one chased me or I’d beat ’em up. People have always been intimidated by me. I’ve always portrayed myself as a much tougher girl than I am.”
When Pink’s parents divorced–she was 8–she began picking more fights at school. By the time she was a teen, she was doing drugs and hopping from one music scene to another–punk, rave, hip-hop, rock, even gospel–getting up to sing whenever she could, but never quite fitting in. When she was 15, her mother finally kicked her out and she went to live with her dad. A year later, in 1996, she was signed to Reid’s LaFace label as part of an R&B group, and then groomed for a solo career. Pink told much of this story in one of the most notorious segments of VH1’s “Driven.” “It made me so sad,” she says now. “It was like, ‘Dude, this is an early obituary. This is something other people can watch after you die’.”
Seeing the music industry up close was a culture shock at first. “I was like, ‘What is this? Nobody does drugs?’ I was already clean by then, but still–people in suits?” And she’s had to dial back her natural combativeness. “That was the hardest thing getting into this business. I was like, ‘F— with me and you’ll pay.’ I do miss fighting, but lawsuits suck.” Still, it hasn’t changed her scrappy style. She’s got a crudely constructed skate ramp in her backyard, a dog named F—er and a bullhorn she uses to yell obscenities at Hart when they argue. Then there’s the skull-and-crossbones ring on her stubby finger, the bar code tattooed on the back of her neck and corky moore, the name of her recently deceased dog, on her inner forearm. Pink’s still asthmatic, still smokes too much, is still a hypochondriac (who’s never really been that sick) and a self-confessed “shut-in.” She recorded much of the new album in her home studio, decorated with posters of Janis Joplin and Bob Marley. “Janis. Dylan. Hendrix,” she says. “They’d never get radio airplay these days. I always thought the ’60s was when I was supposed to be alive.”
As you might imagine, executives at Arista records have spent the past year or so quietly biting their nails as the label’s loosest cannon–and one of its most profitable artists–was finishing her new album, experimenting with punk and Zeppelinesque rock and roping in her unlikely collaborators. “They kept asking, ‘What do you think it’s going to be like?’ and I’d say, ‘Death-metal opera’,” Pink says. " ‘Oh, and a little Barbra Streisand’." (In fact, the new album, co-written and -produced by Perry and a big-deal punk rocker whose name she’s not revealing just yet, ranges from hard-rock blowouts to steamy club beats by the X-rated DJ Peaches. And that love song she now wishes weren’t there.) “The record company was pretty scared, but now that they’ve heard it, they’re OK. I love messing with people.” Between the bullhorn and the late-night skateboarding, her neighbors have already figured that out. Turn down that music, lady. You’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood.
