The Friday Canon: Pink

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

BLIMEY hasn't Pink had a lot of hits! Here's where you pick your favourite five.




[Poll #874449]

Comments

[koganbot]

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.

Kandi and She'kspere

[koganbot]

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.

Re: Kandi and She'kspere

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

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.