Pink Singles Poll

"so what" was my fav when it came out, but "who knew" is the one most likely to lodge itself in my head these days

Ha, you skipped the singles from Try This, which is her best album.

Her early and mid '10s streak was unexpected and remarkable.

missing: “Family Portrait”, which might be my favourite of hers. also loved “Sober” at the time, but haven’t listened to it in eons. also, there was a hot remix of “U + Ur Hand” that I danced my ass of to back then.

*off! I danced it off!

“Blow Me (One Last Kiss)” probably should have been on my ballot for the recent 2010s tracks poll.

i will probly vote Try but it's tough between that, Party Started, Just Like a Pill, Don't Let Me Get Me and maybe So What just a shade below them

“There You Go” still a fave… love “Just Like A Pill” … but lots of others to pick from too!, not quite sure how to vote yet.

Underrated singles artist, though I can sorta only take so much at one go once the production gets really big and walloping. I wonder how much more I'd like her if it weren't for her videos often going for these big, hammy, schticky performances and conceits. In terms of her sales and popularity, she's probably one of the biggest contemporary acts that I never really see talked about. My partner's mom has seen her in concert multiple times, though.

I would have left in the 'minor' singles tbh --- I always liked "Trouble" and "Feel Good Time" though I don't know that I would have voted for either. "Funhouse" is the rare single that provoked a genuine "room falls into silence and everyone looks around wondering if anyone else is hearing what they're hearing" moment, though not in a good way. And "You Make Me Sick" is, like "There You Go," a really earwormy piece of turn-of-the-millennium R&B. But I get that since she shed that sound quickly, they probably don't loom so large in the legacy.

Is there a Lady Marmalade remake participants poll thread?

My partner's mom has seen her in concert multiple times

This is what I find most fascinating about her, I think — her transition from one pop contender among many to rockin' mom who makes music for moms who still want to rock and has completely vanished off the critical radar but continues to have hits. The documentary All I Know So Far, which was filmed on tour in 2019 and came out in 2021, was a really vivid portrait of her taking the whole family on the road (and sending her daughter home when she wasn't having fun anymore and would rather be with her friends).

"Who Knew" or "Try," guess I like the sad mid-tempo ones (see also Adam Lambert's "Whataya Want From Me")

I still vibe to "Most Girls", from her more R&B phase.

Write-in vote for the Can’t Take Me Home album cover

Party is the only one of that's a regular earworm. A few others may be objectively better, but eareorminess goes a long way.

of *these

too school for poll

“Family Portrait” is easily my favourite, but it’s not on this poll. Bigger in the UK than in the US though; “Feel Good Time” even more so.

For 22 years I've wondered: does the album title Can’t Take Me Home mean "you can't hook up with me", "your parents won't like me", "I am an outcast", or some other meaning?

it means her address is hard to find

The lyrics to the song make it clear it’s the second:

“Can't take me home to mama
Cause she wouldn't think I'm proper
Should've of thought about that
Before you fucked with me
Don't say you're falling for me
Don't tell her you adore me
Cause all you're thinking about is fucking me”

The debut album is still great and underrated.

“Who Knew” is pretty great

imo Linda Perry def helped set her up w a good foundation to understand her vocal strengths & what she could personally explore in her lyrics later on

they were a good pairing for that second album

"most girls" missing from list :( tbh i can't think of any song of hers that i'd call great, she's been just kinda good at best and frequently not even that

"lady marmalade" never needs to be remade again and even if it were to be idk why ppl default to imagining another ridiculous five-artist extravaganza, as if that's what made the song famous in the first place

I agree, Veg - kinda leaning towards Don't Let Me Get Me as both the one that got an emotional reaction out of me at the time, and seemingly the starting point for the artist she really became.

yeah def

that one still gets me in my feels

voted 'try'

stupid girls really hasn't aged well now has it

If it was on the list, “Trouble” would’ve been my vote.

Guess I’ll go with “Get The Party Started”.

I enjoyed her at the beginning, lost interest quickly. It’s cool that her career is a strong one.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I would've thought I'd go with "Get the Party Started," but I really love "Try." Just a classic power ballad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i like the vote spread here! i can’t remember what i vote for tho lol

ah man i set this poll then got busy and forgot about it altogether. nice to see there was people wanting to vote for the smaller singles! didn't know how much interest Pink still generated around these parts (for the record Family Portrait is my pick of the ones I omitted). I voted Who Knew for this one, it feels off to go for her more wistful song when she has so many bangers but Who Knew is a really beautiful song.

I'll give a shout out to Walk Me Home which is definitely Pink by the numbers but is a great radio jam out of her recent ones.

yeah, I’m still kinda disappointed that “Family Portrait” wasn’t an option. voted “Sober” instead. guess I like sad Pink.

I hated "There You Go" when it was new but this poll inspired me to listen again and now I love it, so there's that!

sometimes it be's like that!

i kinda hate get the party started?, the lyrics are kinda monotonous to me

"Just Give Me a Reason" is one of those songs I heard a hundred times and didn't give a fig about, then heard it years later and it struck me. Maybe just right place, right time. There's still something now that hits me emotionally about the vocal melody and its jumps and the blend of their voices. Maybe I should have thrown it a vote

Listening to "Who Knew," which I think I missed entirely at the time. It's nice, has a sort of Kelly Clarkson quality. The strings make it feel almost like an alt-rock power ballad,but with a singer who can really sing. I'm not falling in love on first listen, but it would have been cool if she'd stayed in this vein for a while.

For me, so many of her songs are kind of ruined by the bashy onslaught of the compressed drums-and-guitars steamroller. Obviously it's worked out for her, and probably she would not be in the rarified air of all-time bestseller pop superstardom without that sonic attack. But it's just not my thing as much.

lol wait is the line in "Trouble" really "No opiates, to send me into outer space"? I've spent almost two decades thinking it was "No orbits," in a somewhat clunky wink at William Orbit having produced "Feel Good Time" earlier that year.

i feel bad for not voting, a lot of these songs are great. "there you go" will always be the pick for me but that's almost cheating.

"so what" and "u + ur hand" are very memorable & unique pop songs, those would be my next two. "just like a pill" is up there for sure. she was even going hard up until about "raise your glass"

"raise your glass" sounds amazing at the bar around 11:30 pm

lol i had no idea she has a new album out, i like "never gonna not dance again", pretty bad video though.

there are times that I fear that I am being a more recent iteration of the Onion dad who alienates his daughter from her cohort by having her only listen to Remain in Light when my six year old girl listens to Gaga, Robyn, Kylie, Taylor, Katy, and lately Pink…like, should she be listening to Rosalia or Bad Bunny? but I think her listening to those artists is a pretty solid, non rock-snob repertoire for a kid! and goddamn does listening to Pink in the car make me appreciate how good she has been for so long…looking forward to listening to the new record…

she was on the stern show on weds, and she talked about how the entire 4 Non Blondes record —not just "What's Up," which I despised the moment I heard it and that disgust has remained strong for 30 years, but every other song therein— was hugely important to her as a 12 yer old trippin balls. And that reminds me when I heard that Linda Perry was going to do songs with Pink… I thought "there you go" was perfectly good, could have been a perfectly fine TLC record, and there was nothing for her to be ashamed of, and then she works with the singer songwriter of the worst rock single I had ever heard in my life (and I had reviewed the Linda Perry solo album from 1996, which was unutterably bad)…and well, this sounded like a terrible idea… and yet "get the party Started" detonated out of the speaker upon first listen… and more or less everything Linda Perry has been part of since is fantastic (or has some shit she done been really bad?)… I would very much like to encounter some pro-perry, pro-4 non blondes sentiment from any of you guys…

it's not pro sentiment as such but i've never understood those ilmers who have such vehement hate for "What's Up", i'd go so far as to say i kind of enjoy it? maybe the band's visuals are a bit ick, lol

anyway, Pink is fucking great and inasfar as Linda Perry contributed to that i am v pro Linda Perry

otms all around

Also: her greatest hits released a decade ago is a banger, one of the last of its kind (is the GH comp moribund? I think so).

Perry is kind of a kook but i think she has a great voice & she was instrumental in helping Pink find her voice both singing-wise & songwriting-wise

Basically if it wasn't for that dumb-ass song we'd be thinking a lot more fondly of Linda P. It was also a product of a CD-dominant era where it overdrove on the radio as well as album charts when commercial singles were less of a thing.

thing is i do pray every single day for a revolution so

there's a moment in the "never gonna not dance again" video where there's a "blank teen" working a supermarket check-out job, and pink is coming through her line, and the song is like "don't be dumb and checked-out, kid!" which seems a little out-of-touch and american middle class wine mom to me. maybe i'm getting the wrong reading it was a first impression. katy perry has similar moments imo. in other words their patness can get on my nerves a little bit. kp has some bangers i guess but i don't really fuck with her. curious about her vegas residency i might have to see if there's any video footage of it.

expecting DJP to show up to the thread very aggrieved soon re: Linda Perry xpost

"what's up" is very clearly a well-liked song now that has defied whatever critical revulsion it attracted at first. i don't hate it but the number of people who like it is basically annoying

I like Pink in general (especially "Don't Let Me Get Me" and "Raise Your Glass") but "So What" might be my least favorite pop song ever. That main riff/hook just annoys the shit out of me. Not a Linda Perry jam fwiw; it's Max Martin/Shellback.

ever?

There's probably something worse that I've intentionally wiped from my memory, but for now I cannot think of a pop song that I dislike more!

if 'what's up' comes on in a store in the wild, the number of people who will quietly sing along with it is chillingly high.

and i scream at the top of my lungs WHAT'S UP MY BUTT

have to agree that the riff for "So What," especially as echoed in "nyah nyah" form, is extremely grating.

it is hard for me to comprehend hardened/confirmed ILMniks such as the fellas above somehow not liking "So What," which indeed sports a riff that is designed to indeed evoke taunting, which is one of many reasons that song is excellent…

I will add that "give me a reason" is also exceptional: in 2012, people would ask me if I liked "Tonight We are Young" or whatever its called and I said no I don't like it at all, and I am allergic to that young man's voice, and then said "but he's great on this Pink song that's out now," and these people wrinkled they nose like I just cut a particularly noxious fart… did that guy just have to go get a straight job after his bandmate dumped the band so that he could work with every single major female artist (and seemingly never take a break)?

and while Linda Perry may have a reasonably powerful voice, when she intones "and I pray, OHMIGOD, do I pray" she betrays terrible terrible instincts as a singer. I will add that the guitarist's tone is busted, the production is terrible even by the standards of a small fry band doing a demo in 1993, the rhythm section plods like a muh fuh… it's remarkable, and yes an achievement!!! and a recommendation!!! that such an inept recording has since reached like Whitney Houston levels of cultural ubiquity…

after I wrote my initial post, my wife and daughter and I drove to a museum and listened to Mizzundastood. it is again hard to fathom that such an oversinger with such dreadful instincts in 1993 could eight years later contribute such empathetic backup vocals as on "Lonely Girl"; the producer as therapist conceit, which has been employed at such tedious length for Perry and for others for decades now, nonetheless seems believable…

confession: i watched and enjoyed the shortlived Linda Perry reality show where she coached aspiring singers

the good version of "what's up" is clearly the dj miko one

I can get behind that

whatever one can say against Perry as a singer, it's also clear that everything about What's Up's enormous success is straight down to her vocal performance. some people could have certainly done it better - Dolores O'Riordan would have torn that song *up* --- but i really want to try other hammy early 90s singers on it to see just how bad it could have gotten. Ed Kowalczyk's been under the #onethreas lately. "and I said HEEYAYYEEHEYAAA---EEE YEAH YEAHYEAHYEAHYEEEEHHHHEHHH!!!" i'm sure he'd sink his teeth into the "prayer" angle also.

fping you for that

that's fair, the typos alone merit it

next nomination: Eddie Vedder. sure, the bellow on the chorus would be epic, and he'd probably put some convincing feeling into the verses. but imagine how cornily he'd have growled his way through the prayer/revolution stuff. very possibly that bit is just a death trap for any singer occasionally tempted by hamminess.

Rob Halford

David Bowie

All these singers, and more.

A quick note that per the Bridge episode released today, Chris Molanphy's next Hit Parade episode in a couple of weeks will in fact be on Pink and I absolutely can't wait for that.

I liked “What’s Up” at the time – may have helped that I didn’t have MTV so I didn’t have to see that irritating video. These days I feel about it the way I do pretty much every Streisand song ever: it would be a lot better if she wasn’t compelled to start belting it out at some point.

I still would rather hear it than any non-Nirvana grunge-adjacent band, any Oasis, and any nu-metal from the decade.