“Get the Party Started” is perhaps the perfect concert-opener, but when Pink performed it at Nation Tuesday night, she looked a little bored with her massive hit. Getting the “Party” out of the way proved to be both a plus and minus for the talented 22-year Pennsylvania-bred singer, freeing her to concentrate on the other songs in her catalog, which she clearly enjoyed singing, but quite didn’t measure up to her best known song’s verve.
For an artist who broke through in the teen pop market----her 2000 debut album “Can’t Take Me Home” spawned three top ten singles---Pink’s show, despite several pointless costume changes, bore little resemblance to an overblown, “TRL”-friendly spectacle. With a band led by loud electric guitar and pounding drums, songs, like “18-Wheeler”, “Numb” and “Just Like A Pill” from her latest LP “Missundaztood”, evoked the rock-pop signature of artists like Alanis Morissette. More telling was the screaming rock closer “My Vietnam” and a cover of 4-Non Blondes “What’s Up”, revealing that Pink’s work with that band’s former singer Linda Perry (who contributed heavily to “Missundaztood”) left a big impression on the singer.
The large crowd, mainly comprised of under-25 females, ate up 75-minute show, especially the saucy “Respect” and the thumping encore of her latest single “Don’t Let Me Get Me”. That final song’s lines (shouted in unison by the audience) might pinpoint the short-haired (and now pink-free) singer’s appeal: “Tired of being compared/to damn Britney Spears/she’s so pretty/that ain’t me”. That outsider, determined-to-be-myself ‘tude served Pink well as she demonstrated a commitment to becoming an artist who calls her own shots, even if it means pursuing a rock sound that turns her into a 21st Century version of Heart.
Washington Post, 2002
