In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my method up into the current.
Does Pink depend as a rock star? The time period “rock star” has been mainly meaningless for so long as I can bear in mind, so I don’t have an issue with Pink claiming rock-star standing, particularly within the 12 months after the Shop Boyz’ “Party Like A Rock Star” and Nickelback’s “Rockstar” have been each top-10 hits. Pink first rose to fame by making R&B-adjacent teen pop within the Destiny’s Child mode, and she or he’s by no means actually gotten play on rock radio. As quickly as she reached the purpose the place she might assert some profession management, although, Pink reinvented herself as a husky-voiced growler of laborious emotional truths — one thing not altogether in contrast to a rock star.
Maybe Pink was being intentionally provocative when she known as herself a rock star on “So What,” her first solo chart-topper. But every little thing that Pink did in these days was some kind of provocation. In an period when rock stars have been turning into an endangered species, perhaps Pink mirrored some new evolution of the time period.
When Pink calls herself a rock star on “So What,” the “rock” half is perhaps up for debate, however the “star” half will not be. Pink has had an extended, unusual profession, however she’s a remarkably constant presence. At this level, Pink hasn’t had a large chart hit shortly, however she will nonetheless pack arenas at any time when she desires. Anyway, the road about being a rock star isn’t actually the level of “So What.” Instead, it’s a music about happening a hedonistic bender after a nasty breakup. There’s some severe emotional stuff taking place on “So What,” however the music stays huge and shiny and foolish. Pink recorded “So What” when she was going by a heavy time, however she nonetheless turned the music right into a fists-up singalong. Maybe that’s what rock stars do.
“So What” sounds nothing just like the music that Pink made when she first appeared on the pop panorama, however the music continues to be philosophically aligned together with her earliest materials. Pink arrived within the wake of the late-’90s teen-pop increase, and she or he made a direct influence on TRL, the place she was offered as a clubby and racially ambiguous R&B singer. Even at first, although, Pink was making hits that dismissed clueless chumps and materialistic women. Pink co-wrote most of these hits, too. One notable exception was “Most Girls,” the largest hit from Pink’s 2000 debut Can’t Take Me Home, which peaked at #4. (It’s an 8.) Pink didn’t have something to do with writing that music, a Babyface manufacturing. Even on “Most Girls,” although, you possibly can see an early model of Pink’s persona. The music modified, however that persona stood sturdy for many years.
Pink has already been on this column as soon as, as one of many 4 singers on the model of “Lady Marmalade” from the 2001 Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Pink did good work on that file; her vocal might be my favourite of the 4. But Pink wasn’t terribly snug amongst her teen-pop friends on the time; she and Christina Aguilera famously butted heads. Later that 12 months, Pink would dramatically reinvent herself, taking pains to distance herself from everybody else within the TRL ecosystem.
“Get The Party Started” was the bridge file. Pink had at all times been an enormous fan of 4 Non Blondes, the ’90s alt-rock one-hit wonders. When she started working on her 2001 sophomore LP Missundaztood, Pink known as up former 4 Non Blondes chief Linda Perry, who was stunned that Pink wished to work together with her. (Pink likes to inform the story about how she stole Perry’s cellphone quantity from her hairdresser.) Perry wrote and produced the funky, cartoonish club-jam “Get The Party Started,” which wasn’t too removed from Pink’s first-album singles and which peaked at #4. (It’s an 8.) But “Get The Party Started” was additionally a crimson herring. Most of Missundaztood was Pink within the honest singer-songwriter confessional zone, and plenty of the album is even about how laborious it was to get the album made.
On her follow-up single “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” Pink sang about not eager to be “compared to damn Britney Spears” and concerning the imaginative and prescient of pop stardom imposed by her label boss LA Reid, who gamely appeared within the video. Pink fought to file songs like “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” which feels like an especially shiny and polished tackle ’90s Lilith Fair music. “Don’t Let Me Get Me” is nearer to what you’d think about from a Linda Perry music than “Get The Party Started,” however Perry didn’t have something to do with it. Instead, Pink co-wrote “Don’t Let Me Get Me” with producer and TLC collaborator Dallas Austin, who reached deep into his “Unpretty” bag. Dallas Austin additionally produced and co-wrote Pink’s likeminded follow-up “Just Like A Pill.” That’s a pleasant little encapsulation of how Pink’s profession would go — making pop songs with rock producers and rock songs with pop producers.
“Don’t Let Me Get Me” and “Just Like A Pill” each peaked at #8 on the Hot 100. (“Don’t Let Me Get Me” is a 6, and “Just Like A Pill” is a 7.) Those songs obtained folks emotionally concerned in Pink’s entire story, and Missundaztood offered greater than twice as a lot as Pink’s debut, ultimately going quintuple platinum. Pink’s comparatively dangerous decisions had paid off. But when Pink tried to push issues additional on her subsequent file, she fell on her face, although she did it in a cool method. Pink’s most important collaborator on her 2003 LP Try This was motherfucking Tim Armstrong from Rancid, my favourite band of all time. Armstrong has hooks for days, nevertheless it takes actual gumption to listen to that man’s broken-tooth gurgle-slur and to assume that he’s going that can assist you crank out some hits. (Rancid, it’s price mentioning, have by no means as soon as been on the Hot 100.)
I take into consideration Try This on a regular basis. It’s a captivating what-if album, a wierd look into an alternate world the place Rancid’s adrenaline-smashed gutter-punk fashion might work as juiced-up pop music. But that’s not what occurred. Try This bricked, barely limping to platinum standing. Tim Armstrong produced and co-wrote lead single “Trouble,” and that music solely obtained to #68. (Good music, although.) After that large profession setback, Pink felt compelled to name her subsequent album I’m Not Dead. She bounced again a bit when the not-very-good lead single “Stupid Girls” made it to #13, largely by pulling the favored transfer of concentrating on the Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan varieties who have been so prevalent in popular culture on the time.
I noticed Pink open for Justin Timberlake when he was on the FutureSex/LoveSounds tour, and the pairing appeared bizarre. Timberlake was dominating the pop universe, whereas Pink’s profession appeared to be on the wane. Her set was actually spectacular, and it included a model of the aerial-gymnastics act that she’d later deliver to awards-show phases, however an excellent stay present gained’t get you again on the radio. Instead, Pink obtained again on the radio because of her work with Justin Timberlake’s outdated *NSYNC collaborator Max Martin. Martin and his protege Dr. Luke had already made some main hits with Kelly Clarkson, and so they’d developed a model of Martin’s gleaming teen-pop sound that introduced charged-up guitars into the combo. That mixture turned out to be excellent for Pink.
Max Martin and Dr. Luke produced three of the songs on I’m Not Dead, and so they co-wrote all of them with Pink. Two of these songs turned hits. “Who Knew” is identical sort of rousing anthem that Martin and Luke made with Kelly Clarkson, whereas the raunchier “U + Ur Hand” is about telling some jerkoff to go jerk off. Both songs peaked at #9, and I’m Not Dead went double platinum. (“Who Knew” is a 7. “U + Ur Hand” is an 8.)
Those two hits fueled a serious Pink comeback, and so they set her up properly for the second when Max Martin and Dr. Luke took over the charts. But Pink hated working with Dr. Luke. Years later, Kesha, an artist who will ultimately seem on this column, accused Luke of all types of abuses. Pink stated that she didn’t know what had occurred between Luke and Kesha however that Luke, in her expertise, was “not a good person… I have told him that to his face, and I do not work with him.” Pink has saved working with Max Martin persistently over time, however she by no means did something with Dr. Luke once more.
“So What,” the music that took Pink to #1, is a Max Martin observe, however Martin didn’t make it with Dr. Luke. Instead, Martin and Pink co-wrote the observe with one other Martin protege. Karl Johan Schuster, higher identified to the world as Shellback, is one other Swede. Like Max Martin earlier than him, Shellback got here up in metallic, although his model of metallic wasn’t something just like the Bon Jovi-type stuff that Martin made in his outdated band It’s Alive. When Shellback was a teen, he had a solo black metallic mission known as Meriah. Eventually, Shellback turned the singer for Blinded Colony, a band who made melodic dying metallic of the distinctly Swedish At The Gates/In Flames selection.
Max Martin heard one thing within the metallic stuff that Shellback was making, and he introduced the 21-year-old Shellback to file demos at his studio in 2006. A 12 months later, Martin signed Shellback to his Maratone manufacturing firm. “So What” was one of many first songs that Shellback labored on with Martin. Shellback got here up with the primary “So What” riff, which feels like a bully making enjoyable of you on the playground, whereas he was touring with Blinded Colony. Martin and Shellback put a backing observe collectively and despatched it to Pink, and she or he beloved it. The music turned a car for Pink to speak some shit.
In 2001, Pink began relationship the motocross racer Corey Hart, and so they obtained married in 2006. Early in 2008, although, Pink and Hart separated, and “So What” is all about going uncontrolled post-breakup. Even when she’s writing about robust, emotional conditions, Pink usually doesn’t take herself too critically. “So What” is nearly a cartoonish model of the way it feels to snap into fuck-you mode whenever you all of the sudden end up single once more. Pink simply misplaced her husband; she don’t know the place he went. So she’s gonna drink her cash; she’s not gonna pay his hire. She’s obtained a brand-new perspective, and she or he desires to put on it tonight. She desires to get in hassle. She desires to start out a battle.
Pink will get knowingly bratty and infantile on “So What,” and that’s the enjoyable of it. The music is self-aware. Pink is aware of that she’s being ridiculous, and she or he cranks that as much as Looney Tunes ranges within the video. On the second verse, Pink will get pissed off at a waiter giving her desk to Jessica Simpson; she will’t resist another shot at a former TRL peer. She’ll go sit with a drummer, and I at all times took that line to imply that she might at all times go fuck Tommy Lee, although perhaps I’m studying an excessive amount of into it. On the bridge, Pink all of the sudden will get uncooked and wounded, howling that this man was by no means there for her. By the time the music ends, although, she’s again to clowning him; the final sound on the observe is her blowing a literal raspberry.
“So What” veers in several instructions emotionally, however Pink sells the entire music with gusto. She sounds nice, leaning laborious into the raspy and Pat Benatar-esque grain of her voice. You should act to sing a music like “So What.” It’s a enjoyable music, so it’s worthwhile to sound such as you’re having a blast singing it. But you additionally must sound such as you’re one flat tire or misplaced cellphone invoice away from a panic assault. Pink sells all of that. I don’t actually like all her goofy little asides — “check my flow,” the Jessica Simpson line — however she throws herself into that melody.
As with each Max Martin observe, the melody lands more durable than the lyrics. The observe is all hooky, maximal precision. This was a pop second when even a halfway-rock music like this one didn’t sound something like musicians in a room collectively. The sound on “So What” is hermetically sealed; you possibly can virtually scent the ProTools. The beat is identical sort of gleaming glam-rock stomp that Martin and his collaborators dropped at Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” and all of the little manufacturing decisions — the rising guitar drone main into the refrain, the rave-style keyboards on the hook — heedlessly mash all my pleasure receptors.
I respect that sort of sugar-bomb building. I don’t should do any work to get into “So What.” The music exists fully to jam an adrenaline needle into my coronary heart. That sort of observe has a sensible utility; there’s a cause why body-pump lessons at all times use songs like “So What.” If you’re in search of an sincere have a look at the fallout from a breakup, then “So What” won’t be just right for you. That’s not the purpose. The level is the sudden burst of empowering vitality.
With the “So What” video, director Dave Meyers places Pink in all essentially the most ridiculous conditions. The clip opens with what have to be a George Jones homage: Pink piloting a driving mower to a Sunset Boulevard liquor retailer. Then Pink smashes a guitar in a music retailer. She chops a tree onto her neighbor’s entrance garden and humps the air together with her chainsaw. She will get bare and does the “Thriller” dance in entrance of red-carpet paparazzi. She eggs a newlywed couple’s automobile and methods some rocker guys into ingesting piss. Pink’s efficiency of “So What” on the VMAs isn’t on-line anyplace, however she sang the music on a Hollywood backlot, and it climaxed when she blew up a constructing. In the video and that efficiency, Pink is a ridiculous chaos agent, a Tasmanian Devil or a Cookie Monster.
In the video, when Pink hits the “So What” bridge, her husband Corey Hart reveals up, trying about as 2008 as one man might presumably look. Pink and Hart have a candy little second collectively. That tiny scene makes “So What” really feel that rather more real, and it additionally takes a few of the sting away from Pink repeatedly calling Hart a device. Years later, Pink informed Entertainment Weekly, “I had to drink a beer at 7AM, I was so nervous the day of the shoot. I hadn’t seen him in six months. I looked good that day! I made sure of it.” Pink and Corey Hart obtained again collectively quickly afterward, and so they’re nonetheless collectively right now.
“So What” solely topped the Hot 100 for per week, nevertheless it was nonetheless an enormous second for Pink. She was almost a decade into her profession, and she or he all of the sudden had her biggest-ever hit. None of the opposite songs from Pink’s Funhouse album made the highest 10. The LP’s second single, the comparatively severe “Sober,” got here closest, peaking at #15. Still, the album went triple platinum, and it took Pink to a complete new profession excessive. Pink didn’t fall from that top. We’ll see her on this column once more.
GRADE: 7/10