IN THE SAME WAY THAT everyone has a freebie list, everyone has a cheesy list. You don’t necessarily have to sleep with your cheesy list, but you DO have to have shamelessly admit your undying loyalty and love for your cheesy list (unless, y’know, they do something against the world and its children).

My freebie list will remain private. However, my cheesy list, while containing four other people, there is one person who’ll remain confidently at number 3 forever. Her real name is Alecia Moore, but to you and me she’s PINK and perhaps for SEO purposes. P!nk.

I LOVE P!NK! And I’d never really admitted it before. I just kinda took the guilty pleasure in my stride and never spoke about it to anyone. It wasn’t until my boyfriend, and then one of my best friends upon visiting my new grown up flat pointed out the

PINK BOX SET OF CDS

which I happened to own. You can get yourself a boxset of Pink CDs too!

…And then he looked at me with this “but-wtf-you-like-all-those-bands!!!!???!!!!!11111!!!!” face, followed by a little giggle. Which is fine. And I still have friends (kind of) and my boyfriend still loves me (phew!). Nonetheless: I wasn’t prepared to come out like that as a P!nk fan. I always thought you kept that shit hidden but my CD stacking skills were clearly subpar and everything from the faux graffiti Missundaztood to Funhouse (prior to the latest TTAL, obvs) were exposed. Not that it matters, but the blankness of mind which ensued in not knowing how to react reminded me of when this girl at my high school who was my “best friend,” once said to me: “YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT MUSIC!” and I went home and cried every night for the following week, poring over my Libertines and Blur CDs in defiance. She’s probably right. And she’s definitely not. So perhaps they’re both needlessly entwined as these traumatic comments upon my taste and are so scorchingly seared into my brain like this horrific nightmare I live over and over again in my head. Not that it bothers me. Not that I make an extremely conscious effort not to speak to so called best friend ever again. Not that I always try to hide my P!nk boxset beneath my Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash and MSP album collections. And, well, NOT ANYMORE, TWATS!

I’m out.

And I’m a f*cking P!nk fan! And here’s f*cking why.

20 reasons why P!nk rules

 

20. Pink says f*ck in her songs. AND SHE’S A GIRRRRLLLLL!

And she’s pop! Since when did someone with the sugarsweet name of Pink ever elude to swearing? Heehee:

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858849742/

 

19. Pink was doing Pompadour hair waaayyyyyyy before everyone else.

Pompadour, lady quiff, high bangs, 50s, Duck’s Arse, Femme Elvis…. look guys. Pompadour is just SO P!nk, 2006-2010. Miley Cyrus is still doing it. Rihanna did it. And now all these sexy man bands are doing it. Srsly, keep up brats. You are rockin’ PINK with your hair.

18. Pink never wins first place, she don’t support the team

And  I think the fact she admits to having minging socks and not being good with taking directions is the primary, deeply humanising aspect which attracted the masses to Pink in the first place. Her lyrics have personality and humour: they’re made of the stuff of life – which is such stuff as dreams are made on, for the mere mortals among us. I’d rather be nourished than petted, if you know what I mean.

Because when we look back at the state of pop 2000-2020, and we compare P!nk to, say, Taylor Swift, which discography is gonna prepare kids for this world? Would you rather have a daughter raised by Taylor’s babyish ennui lyrics, or the defiance and self-acceptance of Pink? Would you rather have the double-standards-tyranny of the waify Barbie doll who says she doesn’t care about how she looks, or the woman who does care, but chose to make piercings, tattoos, muscles and acrobatics just as socially beautiful?

17. Pink’s ex/addiction/past was Just Like A Pill

Hey. Who needs similies OR extended metaphors, when you can just not do either properly? Sack it. Addicted To Love was taken. It’s something that rings true for a lot of people – whether you have an addiction, a crappy ex you can’t get enough of, or can’t let go of something. Excuse me while I prepare to choke about this at a future dinner party with one of you: but this was probably one of the most perfect pop songs ever. There. I said it. Pow.

16. Pink CAN play guitar

Yayyyyyyyyyyyy!

17. Pink’s a mom!

She’s the coolest mom ever – well, right after Brody Dalle and possibly Kate Hudson (but she did call her baby Bing). Still. No teacher is gonna say boo to this magenta goose when she has to go to her baba’s Parents’ Evening.

16. Pink is not a lecturing popstar

THANKYOU! I have a brain and I’ll sort out my own ethical policy and advocacy.

15. Pink’s the one who proposed. Then Pink broke up with her husband. And then got back with him…even after taking the mick in one of her music videos.

I really, really don’t think any member of Girls Aloud could pull this sort of really heavy, volte-face hot shit off, ever. So Fact 15 explains itself. (In case it didn’t, I’ll put the words ‘strength’ ‘of’ ‘character’ and ‘chemistry’ in here now.)

14. Pink is the popstar you’re allowed to like

OH OKAY. Admittedly, liking Pink is way up there in comparison to the appreciation of Avril Lavigne when it comes to the unspoken rules inside the Socially Acceptable Poppy Pop Fandom charter. I think it all boils down to the idea of authenticity.

13. Pink was Token White Girl

This is amazing and hilarious. Apparently Pink’s name comes from either Mr Pink from Reservoir Dogs, or something she once said in an interview about growing up before writing her first album at 15 as a trouble teen: “I was the tom boy and token white girl in my group” – and everyone called her Pink!

12. Pink’s tattoos are countless

Countless to 20. 20 tattoos – mega, mega awesome. From Craig McLean’s recent article in The Independent:

“Inked on her left wrist is a razor blade. Next to it is the word “‘insecurity’… And that means to me that insecurity will kill you,” nods the kid whose parents divorced when she was nine, and whose wayward teenage years were a cycle of boozing, partying and experimentation with drugs.

“Then I have half of a best friend’s necklace with my friend Lara. Then I have a button [badge] on my right arm that I got with my friend Butch – we got done early in the studio that night. We had been drinking. Obviously. I got this on my right wrist when I was 17: ‘What goes around comes around’.”

11. Pink likes being a little bit weird

From The Independent: “We do fucking awesome, we play crazy places, I’m a headlining bitch, and I’m happy. I’m never gonna be on the cover of a bunch of glossy magazines. If it was a popularity contest, I’m not gonna win, and I’m so fucking cool with that,” she insists.

10. Pink’s a secret homegirl

She was well known for her party habits until she met Carey. And then she got into building a home and family. Cute huh? Oh, and she also likes growing stuff. “Tomatoes, strawberries, all kinds of different lettuces, spinach, kale, melons, [and] all kinds of herbs.”

Wink wink.

9. Lady Marmalade/Pink’s tour props borrows from burlesque, vaudeville and old-school musical theatre

Please welcome Her Royal Hotness.

8. Australia has a thing for her

Depending on your stance of the Aussies at the moment… I think this is still a fairly good thing she has going for her. She’s pretty much broken every single musical world record in that country AND her tours always sell out in about 2 seconds.

7. Pink isn’t scared of talking about feminism.

6. Pink’s husky voice is uniquely her own

None of this lily-livered, heavy breathing nonsense. Pink sings like Rod Stewart before the wedgie.

It’s a good thing, promise.

5. Pink actually sings live on her tours

You shouldn’t expect anything less. Ever.

4. Pink actually was a troubled teenager

These days, when a musician’s PR officer talks about the troubled past, it tends to be the one that daddy bought you when you asked for a trailer to go in a poor people’s trailer park so you could finally talk about your ‘troubled whorish past’ when you finally got that record deal.

Ack.

Pink’s actually been there: “The problem was, I was labelled as trouble — so I was like, ‘trouble?’ I’ll show you trouble. You want trouble, well here it is!” and she liked to mess around with all the bad things and bad nightclubs and underage drinking habits that you’re not supposed to

…and yet she’s turned out alright.

3. Now Pink’s actually made friends with her family again after going off the rails

Respect.

Having a family of her own may have helped in this regard.

Also, apparently the only reason why she doesn’t travel with her parents on tour now is because her Dad’s a bit of a rough bastard – as in – he likes beating on gobby bouncers for giggles. “He had this big, big, solid bear of a man on his knees whimpering, so we can’t really travel together,” Pink said to Conan O’Brien back in 2008.

2. Pink was in Charlie’s Angels 2 – and was the only good thing about Charlie’s Angels 2.

1. Pink is all about strength – her lyrics, her look, her body and even her public life: she keeps all that stuff

to-geth-er.

So raise your glass. And check out Pink’s performance for The Truth About Love from Melbourne, Australia, while you still can.