Pink still feels like an underdog, even as the singer sells out stadiums
2023 has been a year of sold-out stadium concerts… but only one of the women breaking attendance records has built a global brand singing upside down. High-flying stunts are only part of her appeal. Alecia Moore is known as much for her party anthems as her powerhouse voice. And if the name is unfamiliar, it's because she's best known by her one-word professional identity: "Pink." Pink famously has no filter and fans who have followed her 25-year career have come to expect her to share every detail of her sometimes-troubled story.
Cecilia Vega: Do I have this right? You're willing to talk about anything. Any question is fine. There's no offense taken.
Alecia (Pink): Yeah, it's all– I'm-- I'm open to all of it.
Cecilia Vega: A lotta people in your world, thrive on protecting privacy. You're an open book. Why?
Alecia (Pink): I guess I look at it in a very specific way. If I'm a mystery to you, how can I expect you to connect with me? And if I'm a person that's desperate for connection, then why would mystery be interesting to me? I wanna know you. I want you to know me.
Start by coming to one of her concerts. We were there for her homecoming shows in Philadelphia last month… one stop on a year-and-a-half long tour.
She's already set attendance records in stadiums around the world and sold more than $350 million in tickets.
A Pink concert is part rock rager, part Broadway spectacle, with some Tinker Bell sprinkled in.
She belts out her hits while flipping and flying a hundred feet in the air. …and she does it without lip syncing. When she says she actually sings *better* upside down, believe her.
Now 44, when she looks out into the crowd, she sees a lot more moms and dads. She calls herself and her fans the uncool kids… and takes great pleasure in taking on their haters. whether in her shows or on social media, her message is: don't mess with them… or me.
Cecilia Vega: This image that you've created-- you've got this famous snarl
Alecia (Pink): Yes
Cecilia Vega: Right? I wonder if when that started the message was, "this is a woman that you don't wanna mess with."
Alecia (Pink): Well, this is a woman you don't wanna mess with is a true statement. I know what certain people think of when they look at me, down to the fact that I'm muscular, I'm outspoken, and I have short hair. I'm possibly a dude— definitely a lesbian. People sort of put you in a box no matter what you look like. And my box happens to be if you're outspoken and you don't sort of bend to societal norms, then you're scary and dangerous.
Cecilia Vega: And the reality is?
Alecia (Pink): The reality is I am the goofiest, most fun-loving person that will possibly kick your ass if I have to.
These days, life is less "get the party started" and more "get these kids to bed." Her 6-year-old son Jameson and 12-year-old daughter Willow are often on tour with her, riding their scooters on stage during sound checks. For the hometown show in Philly, Pink's husband, motocross star Carey Hart, was there… and so was her mom Judy.
Alecia (Pink): So this is our tour library.
Backstage, there's a library where the team swaps books. Pink has a romantic novel she needs to return.
Alecia (Pink): We have a little—(laugh)
Cecilia Vega: You actually have—
Alecia (Pink): –little sign in sheet
Cecilia Vega: (laughs) You actually have a sign in sheet.
Alecia (Pink): I wish I had the (makes noise) thing. But we don't have that
Cecilia Vega: So I've been backstage for other artists. And some of the things I've seen are a lot of booze.
Alecia (Pink): Yeah
Cecilia Vega: A lot of party.
Alecia (Pink): Cool. My dressing room used to be, like, whiskey and cigarettes. Then it was ball pits and stuffed animals.
When she's not on the road, she's home in southern California. This is where she's Alecia Moore… a mohawk-wearing mom who bakes sourdough and is part of the PTA. She's either driving for school drop off or driving a forklift on her 25-acre vineyard. She says she schooled herself on the science of wine making by studying late into the night after her shows.
Cecilia Vega: So do I have this correct? You don't make pink rosé?
Alecia (Pink): I do not make pink rosé. My--grenache is– it looks like a white wine. Occasionally it's a –bit peach, but –
Cecilia Vega: You drink it?
Alecia (Pink): I drink a lot-- well, (laughs) Biggie Smalls once said, "Never get high on your own supply," (laughs) but--
Cecilia Vega: He sure did.
Alecia (Pink): --yes, I do. I drink a lotta wine. (laughs)
Home is also where she makes music…
Alecia (Pink): This is my music room.
Cecilia Vega: Gorgeous--
Cecilia Vega: It's really great.
Alecia (Pink): Yeah.
She's a writer on most of her songs and says no topic is off limits-- not even the ups and downs in her marriage.
Cecilia Vega: And you taught yourself--
Alecia (Pink): And--
Cecilia Vega: --to play on this?
Alecia (Pink): Sorta kinda. I mean, I can play halves of songs. One of my favorite songs is "Make You Feel My Love." And I played this every day during COVID.
This is a Bob Dylan song made most recently famous by Adele…
Alecia (Pink): That's one of my favorite songs. (singing) "When the rain is blowing in your face and the whole world is on your case, I could offer you a warm embrace to make you feel my love."
Alecia (Pink): So I played that every day--
Cecilia Vega: Wow. Wow.
Alecia (Pink): --until I was good enough to-
Cecilia Vega: You taught yourself.
Alecia (Pink): --go on stage and play an instrument.
She grew up singing opera and gospel in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. But she says tension at home made her desperate to leave. She calls her relationship with her father, Jim Moore, complicated. He served in Vietnam and passed away two years ago. As a teen, arguments with her mother were so bad, Pink says one fight got physical and her mom fell down stairs. She now calls that her one regret in life.
Cecilia Vega: You've said you were the kid that other moms didn't want their kids to play with. Why?
Alecia (Pink): I was a punk, I had a mouth. I was-- (makes noise) I had a chip on my shoulder. Basically I grew up in a house where everyday my parents were screaming at each other, throwing things. They hated each other. And then I got into drugs. I was selling drugs. And then I was kicked out of the house. I dropped outta high school. I was off the rails.
Cecilia Vega: What happened on Thanksgiving in 1995?
Alecia (Pink): Thanksgiving of 1995 I was at a rave and I overdosed. I was on-- oh boy-- ecstasy, angel dust, crystal, all kinds of things. and then I was out. Done. Too much.
Cecilia Vega: You almost died?
Alecia (Pink): Yeah.
She says that was the end of hard drugs for her, and weeks later got her first record deal as the lead singer in an R&B girl group. But they didn't last long.
Cecilia Vega: So, when you're starting out, the industry sort of seems like they've got you going down a path. They paint you with an R&B brush?
Alecia (Pink): Yes, I signed to LaFace Records. We were the token White girls on a Black label.
Alecia (Pink): I was told to take etiquette classes very early on. They wanted me to learn how to wear dresses and use the right fork.
Cecilia Vega: How'd that work out?
Alecia (Pink): I went once. But it didn't work.
Cecilia Vega: What did they not like?
Alecia (Pink): I think they were tryin' to turn me into something that I didn't wanna be. Image is everything in this business.
Using her teenage nickname Pink, she went solo and her first album was an R&B double-platinum success. She then broadened her sound to include rock and pop.
And not so subtly named her next album "Missundaztood"…
It was a career-defining hit, selling 15 million copies around the world.
Cecilia Vega: You'd said in the past it felt like you were never winning the popularity contest among your peers.
Cecilia vega: What do you mean by that?
Alecia (Pink): We sold three million tickets in the last six months, but you don't really hear about it unless you went. So at the end of the day, do I give a –it who talks about me? As long as the mom and the daughter, or the dad who's in the Pink t-shirt, as well as his daughter and her three friends, had a fantastic time-- or the gay couple that came together and felt super safe at my show because no one heckled them, that's what really matters.
And then there's this…
We wanted to know how she does it… singing upside down .. as an asthmatic no less… Well, it took a lot of childhood gymnastics classes and tortured training sessions with her aerialist coach Dreya Weber.
Dreya Weber: OK, tighten up your stomach.
Dreya Weber: Are you ready?
Alecia (Pink): Be nice.
Dreya Weber: Now sing.
Alecia (Pink): (singing) "Where this is desire there is gonna--"
Dreya Weber: Come on--
Alecia (Pink): (singing) --"gonna be a flame."
Dreya Weber: Come on. (laughter)
Alecia (Pink): (singing) "Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned. Just because--"
Dreya Weber: Come on.
Alecia (Pink): (singing) --"It burns doesn't mean you're gonna die. (singing) "You gotta get off." (laughter)
Alecia (Pink): I'm not just a singer. I'm a gymnast. I can do all kinds of things. I'm physical. This body, like-- this-- the muscles that-- that scare people are-- it's my power. Right? It's like, I don't eat well to look good, I eat well to go far, fast and hard.
At 5'3", she is all muscle… and make no mistake, as tough as she looks.
Alecia (Pink): I realize that the machete that I've always carried, this metaphorical machete that I've always carried that made me a really difficult kid, is what makes me really good at what I do today. And it makes me a survivor.
Cecilia Vega: Do you feel like you needed that hard edge, that machete to climb as far as you've climbed in this business, particularly?
Alecia (Pink): Absolutely. Absolutely I never got a record deal because I was cute; I got a record deal because I was fiery, I had a lot to say, and I had a voice. So I'm relieved I don't have to fall back on-- sort of conventional beauty. And-- and that doesn't have to be my thing. And I don't have to keep that up, either, as I age. I don't have to be that. I can be all of this.
She won't need a plan b any time soon, but as she told us at midnight over a glass of wine in her dressing room in Philadelphia, she is planning the next chapter.
It's what any self-respecting acrobatic, sequin-loving entertainer would do… a Las Vegas residency.
Alecia (Pink): I would like to have the best show that Vegas has ever seen. And I think that I can. For a performer like me to have a stage that doesn't have to travel, (laughs) oh my God. You can do so much.
Cecilia Vega: So all these years in, what's the hardest part about your job now?
Alecia (Pink): I guess that I keep demanding more, and more, and more, and more from myself physically, emotionally, spiritually-- vocally. I wanna raise the bar all the time. And I'm sort of going against time, right?
Cecilia Vega: How do you keep outdoing that?
Alecia (Pink): I like going against societal norms. When they say a woman has to slow down, become smaller, take up less space, calm down, no. Absolutely not. Why? Who says? Why can't we ride it till the wheels fall off? (laugh) That's what I plan on doin'.
Produced by John Hamlin and Kara Vaccaro. Broadcast associate, Katie Jahns. Edited by Michael Mongulla.
