poptimists | The Friday Canon: Pink

First five singles = grebt
Everything since = rub

!!! family potrait == HEART-RENDING WONDER. this is poss linked to the video, which is amazing.

the three singles after the first five I do like with SADNESS and RESERVATIONS that they simply don't compare to anything which came before!

Pink's family angst <<<<<<< Xtina's family angst

but Pink's family angst + Xtina's family Angst = fantastic new breed of female-confessional that is shiny shiny pop and not whiny acoustic sludge => joy.

I like a lot of the nu-female confessional but I'd give it all up in a second to have the golden age of r&b back :(

It's not quite that simple. Lady M is rub and You Make Me Sick is a bit poor too. Whereas Trouble is good.

i can't remember 'most girls' at all so ticked 'you make me sick' out of desperation.

Most girls= marvellous. It is all about rejecting capitalism. Possibly.

think you gotta keep her iced, you don't; think she's gonna spend your cash, she won't; even if you were broke Pink's love don't cost a thing

most girls want a man with the bling bling
got my own thing, got the ching ching
i just want real love...

'Most Girls' is the PINKANON WINNER, it really is banging.

Most Girls is good but I think the Problem Of Pink is summed up thus:

- she actually *was* a pretty generic R&B popstar, in fact I remember Tim Finney in 2000 writing about her first alb in similar terms to the ones Lex uses for Pussycat Dolls - absolutely generic but good because the genre is good.

- so her move to become Pink Rock actually makes sense - she's LOADS more individual and interesting now (sometimes in a kinda lame way as she feels she has to refight old rock battles), and that includes musically, but "interesting" music isn't always good music.

So the choice is between someone who is OK at a great style of music and someone who is grebt at her quite bad own thing.

the fact that she's more individual now is precisely why she's worse, because she's so bloody unsubtle and loud and "LOOK I AM INDIVIDUAL" about it, the equivalent of indie kids banging on about how unique and unlike anyone else and unmainstream they are, and I don't think she is really, especially not now nu-female confessional has taken over so much.

and the thing with being generic in a brilliant genre is that often no one actually sounds quite like you because most other faces of that genre will have...something which marks them out, something which makes them ungeneric. to be generic is to encapsulate the platonic ideal of the genre!

Pink was one of two R&B stars I first heard on the Peel show, and I was almost as excited about There You Go as I was about Kelis's Get Along With You - she didn't strike me as simply generic then. I like some of the rockier stuff, but not as much as how she started.

b-b-but "got me lit like a candlestick"!

I really love this insane oversung diva version of Lady M, I bought the CD single at the time. It's so pneumatic.

I thought 'Trouble' was VERY poor, a shoddy aimless tuneless thing which marked the end of any interest I had in Pink.

problem with lady mamamamamlade is that Mya comes off horribly within it, her voice doesn't blend at all and is this meek sexless nothing against all that brashness, Pink's snarl and Xtina's holler and Lil Kim's strutting drawl.

Mya is the COUNTERPOINT! the nice girl with the proverbial heart of gold, amidst her battle-toughened colleagues.

Thing about Pink is that she seems kind of more eccentric than punk. I quite like her all the same.

I think Pink is one of those pop stars where everyone knows who she is but if you asked most people to sit down and name five of her songs they'd struggle. I don't know what most of these sound like!

There's going to be a massive runaway winner here.

indeed. i can't bring myself to enter, leave alone come up with 5 ticks. sorry

this is only because you two are 2xGRANDADS when it comes to keeping up with the modern pop!

I know what all of these sound like and I don't even like the woman.

The small number of votes in this canon would appear to disagree with you.

Have we done Sugacanon yet? Or Missycanon?

Haha or the much-threatened PRMLSCNN.

dare i say that you two are not the ONLY grandads who totter amongst us

bludy kids...

i only ticked 2 and LDY MRMLD was a sympathy tick RLY...

P!nk's best two songs are "Is It Love?" and "Dear Diary," neither of them singles; "Is It Love?" is on the first alb and foreshadows the r&b spareness (the stark sound in a large dark empty space) that is to come from Ciara and Cassie et al. AND foreshadows the family drama that is to come from Pink. It has r&b discipline and the mess that's trying to break out of it, perfectly balanced. It's about her relation to a boyfriend who's ignoring her but it's addressed to her parents from whom she needs understanding that she knows they're incapable of providing. All this conveyed in maybe 12 lines. "Dear Diary" is a chant and a mother-goose singsong, circling around, never able to alight.

"There You Go" did too have a distinct voice, though its distinction is easier to hear in retrospect. The track's a Kandi-She'kspere-type thing not unlike "No Scrubs" and "Bills Bills Bills," but that's not enough to be a genre or generic given that TLC and Destiny's Child both have strong individual identities that shine through the style (TLC phlegm and Beyonce's gloss are kinda opposites, don't you think?), and Pink sings with an earlier-era r&b's burr and franticness; she'll later pry the burr and franticness farther open to create a chasm of pain.

Also, another reason that "There You Go" isn't generic is that it has a strong Kandi-She'kspere personality to it: their long snaking melodies and their delicate ornamental harpsichords on tracks that are nonetheless tough stuff. "Generic" is usually reserved for songs that don't seem distinct from the rest of a genre, not for tracks that have a character that you identify with the people who make them.

Ah I loved harpsichord r&b! But that style did seem rather omnipresent back then, from 'Bills Bills Bills' to 'The Real Slim Shady' to 'No Scrubs'. I mean, 'Buttonz' by the Pussycat Dolls has a very strong Scott Storch personality to it, but it's also totally generic.

I loved the way 'Most Girls' functioned as a sequel/flipside to 'No Scrubs' which left men with nowhere to turn: on one side TLC were saying that if you didn't have a job, a car, money, they weren't interested; on the other, Pink was saying that if you did have all of that, she...wasn't interested.

Xgau's review of the first alb:

Can't Take Me Home [LaFace, 2000]
Armed with a Day-Glo dye job and some ace Babyface subcontracts, a tough talker diddles teenpop's love button. In a world where the half-word "sh-" teeters on the edge of going too far, she and hers bet - correctly - that a simple "I'm pissed" will pack a wallop, and work from there. When she admits to the loss of her slurred "cherry" in the finale, you can only wonder how sexy she'll be when she shows pink for real. B+

omg i di'int know 'most girls' was PINK.

color me disappointed in her later work.

[an indie kid banging on about how unique and unlike anyone else and unmainstream they are]

my favourite, for sheer audacity, is my vietnam, comparing family conflict to a forty year war taht killed millions, and it works, it shouldnt work, but she has the ego to pull it off

sod five ticks. I ticked most of these - following the mark s Quo principle

Feel Good Time and There You Go are fantabulous.

The Friday Canon: Pink

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Kandi and She'kspere

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You can only wonder how sexy she'll be...

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