What you hear on the radio, on a CD player (if your target group still has one) or on Pink’s streaming portals is flawless consensus pop. Songs suitable for the masses, solidly composed and with the recognizable voice of Alecia Beth Moore, as Pink’s real name is. 60 million albums sold, countless number one chart entries, three Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame don’t lie.
Rarely is Pink’s music too smooth, after all she is the post-punk queen of the 21st century, a role model of the self-determined, quite rebellious woman, as one can see on early album titles like “M!ssundaztood” or listen to songs like “You Make Me Sick” or “Dear Mr. President”. Musically, it’s closest to rock, but never so heavy that pop audiences are excluded. She’s also sexy, but never as an object, rather dominantly self-confident. But at the same time hedonistic, bourgeois and so approachable that she lets the fans participate extensively in her private life – from the riot girl youth as a child of divorce with the full program of school problems, drugs and conflicts of all kinds to the current challenges as a wife and mother .
Nonetheless, all of this does not even begin to capture the phenomenon of pink. That only comes to life on stage. Bombastic stage sets with seas of spotlights, moving elements, video fields and pyrotechnics, integrated into a perfect choreography and, above all, her artistry with equilibristic and trapeze numbers as an absolute unique selling point, while at the same time (and without A-Tune) she sings to her knees – for the big ones Pink has set the benchmark for indoor concerts for two decades. Before Corona, this also worked in the stadiums, as you can see from the SZ criticism of their last appearance in the Olympic Stadium in 2019: “More is not possible in pop. Others can only marvel and learn here.”
So now Pink is back in the same place for two evenings. And already at the first dates of her 61-station “Summer Carnival” tour in Berlin you could see that she had trained properly. Even now that she’s 43, what she’s showing is still worthy of a circus. On her biggest hits of 20 years, which she is perhaps most looking forward to herself: “It’s been three long years and I’ve missed live music so much. I’m so excited to be coming back to Europe to sing, crying, sweating and making new memories with my friends,” she says, promising, “It’s going to be magical!”
Pink, Wednesday and Thursday, July 5th and 6th, 7 p.m., Olympic Stadium, Spiridon-Louis-Ring 25, www.olympicpark.de