Hip-hop music continued in popularity, with Eminem’s single ‘Lose Yourself ’ from the soundtrack of the film 8 Mile picking up an Oscar in 2002 and 50 Cent sweeping the charts in 2003. In many ways hip-hop had replaced rock’n’roll for America’s youth, although rock legends like Aerosmith, U2, Guns’n’Roses, the Rolling Stones, Metallica and Bon Jovi were still making noise.
The first half of the decade saw a mixed bag of female performers in the charts. Beyonce became a solo artist performing with her boyfriend Jay Z and independently from Destiny’s Child. The country band the Dixie Chicks had a mainstream hit with the Stevie Nicks song ‘Landslide’ and copped a ban from the neo-cons for speaking out against George Bush’s war in Iraq. Canadian teenager Avril Lavigne hit the airwaves with one of 2002’s biggest selling albums Let Go and American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson kept racking up the hits. In New York Karen O made her mark with Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
In the USA a new rock chick emerged, one who had a unique take on the world around her—many thought Pink would settle into the pop category along with Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera and J Lo. But she has rock in her heart and by the release of her second album M!ssundaztood in 2002 she was topping the charts.
Pink reintroduced us to the female singer who writes and sings about things that aren’t the most comfortable topics—the impact of warring parents on children, the entertainment industry’s fixation on thin surgery-enhanced women, and internal conflict. It was the first time for a long while that a woman in rock was singing about something other than losing her man.
Other bands were taking up the protest song again. New wave punk rockers Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot debuted in the top spot on the Billboard charts, its lyrics expressing the sentiments of a disgruntled generation and seeding this previously alternate band in the mainstream consciousness.
New music was being made in New York with the formation of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs headed up by punk rocker Karen O. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs—Karen with Brian Chase and Nick Zinner—released their first album in 2003, Fever to Tell. The punk-oriented sound and O’s voice showed leanings towards the same stripped-back rock of the early PJ Harvey.
On Boxing Day 2004 the largest recorded tsunami hit Asia killing more than 200,000 and wiping out communities across nations. British musicians came to the aid of the displaced people with the biggest benefit concert since Live Aid. Tsunami Relief Cardiff, held in Wales in January 2005, raised over a million pounds for the relief effort.
The rock sound known as nu-metal, which appeared at the end of the 1990s, continued to be popular on the alternate charts, but as the decade rolled on the public lost interest in this narrow stream fed by bands like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Good Charlotte and the Vines. Another group of indie musicians moved into the punk-rock space including the White Stripes and the Killers.
In July 2005 the Live8 series of concerts were held simultaneously across ten different cities, including London, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome and Moscow. Bob Geldof, who had masterminded Live Aid, was once again in the organiser’s seat. The concerts featured more than a thousand musicians. In London U2, Madonna, Coldplay, Sting, Pink Floyd, the Who, Paul McCartney and Elton John entertained the thousands who poured into Hyde Park.
As the year rolled around to 2006 female pop singers began to dominate the charts—Ashlee Simpson and her sister Jessica, Kelly Clarkson, Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and Britney Spears. In 2007 the Pussycat Dolls became the next band to enter the reality TV realm, holding auditions in the search for a new ‘doll’.
The Idol shows swept the globe, with national TV competitions to find a star. American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson was the show’s real success story, clocking up multiple international hits.
At the time of writing, the USA was trying to wind up its involvement in Iraq, but was deeper into Afghanistan. The conflict between Israel and Palestine was no closer to resolution, North Korea and Iran were flexing their nuclear muscles and China and India were becoming major powers. Global warming was accepted as a reality and governments were scrambling to make up for lost time.
We are living in a material world where credit card debt is at an all-time high. And in a culture that is fixated with celebrities. Reality shows have redefined TV entertainment, taking it back to ancient Rome and the games of the Coliseum. The only difference is you don’t have to leave your living room and no one is mauled to death by a lion—death in reality TV land is of the metaphoric kind.
The only rock chick consistently figuring in the charts is Pink.
So where have all the rock chicks gone?
KELLY CLARKSON
Million-dollar babe
Kelly Clarkson’s rise to fame reads like a fairytale. The first winner of American Idol in 2002, Kelly walked away with a million dollars in prize money and a recording contract with RCA. But she has proved that her musicianship extends far beyond the manufactured environment of TV’s hottest talent contest.
Born in 1982 in Burleson, Texas, a small Christian community near Fort Worth, Kelly grew up in a sheltered part of the USA that until recently was one of the last remaining bastions of prohibition. Kelly gained a broad musical education. Her parents’ diametrically opposed musical tastes—Billie Holiday and Etta James could often be heard along with Guns’n’Roses—provided an inspirational environment for the young singer who sang with the school choir.
Wanting to spread her wings, in her late teens Kelly headed to Los Angeles where she tried her hand at acting. She landed a few bit parts in TV shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. But her curvy figure wasn’t what Hollywood was looking for and it wasn’t long before Kelly was back in Burleson working as a cocktail waitress. Friends encouraged her to audition for American Idol. The rest, as they say, is history.
Following her win, Kelly threw herself headlong into the world of rock’n’roll. Her first album, Thankful, was released in 2003, hitting the top spot on the charts and putting in a double platinum performance. Its number one single, ‘Miss Independent’, was co-written by Kelly and Christina Aguilera. The album was a mixture of pop, R&B, gospel and country, Kelly handling the range with ease.
She hit the road for the first time to support the release of Thankful. And she performed on the American Idol tour and competed in World Idol in 2004—she came second. That year her next album, Breakaway, was released. This multi-platinum selling album cemented Kelly’s position as an international artist and not just a competition winner. It launched no less than four hit singles, including the chart topper ‘Since U Been Gone’.
On Breakaway Kelly demonstrated her prowess as a songwriter, co-writing six tracks, including the ballad ‘Because of You’, which was about the breakdown of her parents’ marriage. The album’s title single was co-written with Avril Lavigne, who Kelly says is an incredible songwriter. Breakaway was more rock oriented, a deliberate decision on Kelly’s part. It reflects the energy and tone of her live performances. Breakaway topped the Billboard hot adult contemporary songs for 2005 and ‘Since U Been Gone’ spent thirty-three weeks in the weekly top forty, making it the longest charting single for that year.
Success hasn’t altered the values of this deeply religious singer. Kelly has chosen to live in Texas rather than take up digs in LA. She isn’t interested in buying into the hype around being a rock star, including the pressure to be thin—she likes her curves and has refused to join the ranks of the size zero.
Since she stepped on to the world musical stage, Kelly has picked up two Grammys, MTV awards, and several American Music Awards, including 2005 artist of the year. In 2006 Kelly headlined a massive world tour before heading back into the studio. Her latest album is My December. She continues to be the only American Idol winner to date to prosper.
PINK
A Rockin’ Tomboy
Pink was born Alecia Beth Moore in 1979. She grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Doyl
estown in Pennsylvania, an hour north of Philadelphia. Doylestown was a typical northeastern American city. Downtown was like a demolition zone, its empty buildings, vandalised shops and dilapidated warehouses a grim reminder of the sweep of progress and the shopping mall mentality that had killed off many lively town centres.
Her father Jim Moore, a Vietnam vet, was an insurance broker who loved to play guitar, write songs and sing. The Moores played an eclectic mix of music. Pink’s father favoured Dylan, Joplin, the Mamas and Papas and Billy Joel. Her mother Judy, who worked as a nurse, loved to listen to R&B and soul sisters, including Dionne Warwick, Donna Hathaway and Aretha Franklin.
Jim regularly sang his baby daughter to sleep. When she was older he would play the guitar while the little girl sang along. She remembered telling him she was going to be a rock’n’roll star—and he believed her. Even as a youngster she had a powerful voice and a steely determination.
As an infant, Pink suffered from a collapsed lung, the ongoing effects of which manifested themselves in various bronchial conditions, including asthma, which plagued her throughout childhood. To combat her breathing difficulties, she undertook singing lessons to teach her how to expand her lung capacity.
Home life was anything but happy. The Moores may have loved their offspring but the same couldn’t be said for each other. There were constant screaming matches, often in front of the children, and tempers ran hot. Pink captured the domestic turmoil of her childhood in her video for the 2002 song ‘Family Portrait’, which she says is an honest portrayal of the way life was in the Moore household when she was a kid. Apparently the video seriously distressed her parents, who were unaware of the impact their arguments had on their children.
by her mid-teens, she had pretty much worn out the desire to trash herself with narcotics
Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and Pink, with her older brother Jason, lived with their mother until she was fifteen. Her fondest memories of her childhood are centred on being outdoors, rough-housing in the woods with Jason, playing sports and camping.
There are two stories about how Pink got her moniker. One suggests that it was a result of her embarrassment at a schoolmate’s discovery she had no knickers on under her trousers. The other refers to the colour of her vagina and was in answer to an African-American friend wanting to know what white girls looked like. Her friends began calling her Pink from the time she was about fifteen. It stuck.
A tomboy in both physicality and attitude, in her youth Pink would be out skateboarding with her mates, playing pool or hanging at local gay clubs, places where she wouldn’t get hassled by men. She wasn’t a lesbian but has many gay female friends. When she did go to straight clubs she occasionally toted a handgun. Philadelphia could be pretty rough at night and she learned how to read the street earlier than most.
As a child she was wild and unruly, smoking a packet of cigarettes a day from the age of nine, despite her lousy lungs. The young teenager stayed out to all hours, dropping acid and any other illicit drugs she could get her hands on, except heroin. Having read up on the different effects of drugs and how much you could take before killing yourself, she steered clear of smack—it was too unpredictable.
She’d lost friends to drug overdoses. The closest she came to becoming a statistic was one Thanksgiving when she nearly OD-ed on a cocktail of cocaine, ecstasy, angel dust and booze.
Music became her salvation. At thirteen she was singing in gospel choirs, usually the only white face. But her voice could easily have been mistaken for that of an African-American. By fourteen she was a back-up vocalist with local hip-hop group Schools of Thought, trying to get a rock band off the ground and doing a solo stint at dance joint Club Fever. The DJ let her sing a song one night a week. If she wasn’t singing, she was busting moves as a break dancer.
Pink was full of rage against the establishment and stuck her finger up at any figures of authority—teachers, police, her mother. She had her fair share of trouble with the police for typical teenage acts like running away from home and shoplifting.
At her wit’s end, and struggling to cope as a single mom, Judy Moore took Pink to a therapist at the age of fourteen. Pink used the sessions to spin fantastic tales about the things she’d like to do to those who made her mad. The therapist gave up after a few visits. It wasn’t long before her mother showed her the door. Pink moved in with her father.
She dropped out of school and took whatever work came her way—at fast-food outlets and gas stations. When she was too wasted to go home, she’d crash at friends’ houses. By the time she was in her mid-teens, she had pretty much worn out the desire to trash herself with narcotics. She let the drugs slide, although booze and cigarettes would remain constant companions.
the songs she wrote focus on her frustration at the injustices that life hands out
Her father was stricter with her and tried to give his daughter guidance. But she was headstrong and didn’t like to be told. There were frequent clashes, but Pink knew how far she could push her father before she hit the point of no return. The hostility existing between mother and daughter wasn’t present. Slowly Pink began to channel her energies into more positive areas.
Jim Moore tried to impart his own values on his daughter, encouraging her to base her life on honesty. She took the lesson to heart—as is evidenced by the shoot-from-the-hip frankness which is as much her trademark as her cropped hair and commanding voice.
Songwriting became a new form of therapy for the angst-ridden teen, who was living a life that was far older than her years. At fifteen she was in a relationship with a man who had a three-year-old daughter. The affair lasted six years, with Pink playing mother for part of that time. The songs she wrote during this period focus on her frustration at the injustices life hands out—not only to her. She was full of anger.
At fifteen she was spotted at Club Fever by an executive from MCA, who enlisted Pink for R&B girl group Basic Instinct. But it was a short-lived venture. Then came another R&B group, Choice, a trio with Chrissy Conway and Sharon Flanagan. Choice was signed to LaFace Records on the basis of a demo tape. LaFace, which was distributed through Arista, was headed by Antonio ‘LA’ Reid and Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, both of whom had been in the 1980s’ R&B band the Deele before starting their own label.
Pink remembered how daunting it was when Choice was asked to fly down to Atlanta to sing for LA Reid. They were confronted with an audience of dozens—it seems that Reid was so impressed with the demo that he had called in all his staff to witness the birth of his new superstars.
Despite having a record contract, Choice split up before they made it into the studio. The girls couldn’t agree on the group’s musical direction. Conway would go on to make her name as a Christian singer in ZOEgirls. Both Conway and Flanagan appeared on Pink’s first album as back-up vocalists.
By 1997 Pink was signed to LaFace as a solo artist. While she waited for the label to make a decision on her future, she sang back-up vocals for various artists, including Diana Ross and Kenny Lattimore. The session work kept the wolf from the door and meant that Pink could concentrate on her songwriting.
LaFace had an impressive stable, including Toni Braxton, Outkast, TLC, Dido and Usher. Pink was suitably awestruck, but she also realised that in such high-calibre company she needed to get serious. Gone were the late nights and crippling hangovers. She threw herself into training. She spent hours in the gym and pounded the pavement getting her body into shape. And she worked on her voice.
Wanting to be recognised for her songwriting skills as well as her powerful soprano vocals, Pink busied herself writing. The label put together a slew of producers to work on her first album Can’t Take Me Home, which was recorded in Atlanta. LA Reid and Babyface headed the team as executive producers.
Pink has said working on the album was akin to being on a conveyor belt in a music factory—in the stud
io with one producer, record the song, then move on to the next studio, next producer, next song. It was less that satisfying, but she knew she had to toe the line first time around.
On first hearing Pink’s powerful voice, many assumed she was an African-American. There was a rumble in the music world when it was discovered she was a tattooed white girl with a shock of pink hair, rock hard abs and a mouth that would make a truck driver blush. But that didn’t take away from the fact she had an amazing R&B voice.
Released in 2000, Can’t Take Me Home drew positive reviews from the music press, which was surprised at the maturity of the newcomer’s work. Likened to R&B darlings TLC, the album shot her into the spotlight. Pink co-wrote seven tracks on the album, including the US top ten hit ‘There U Go’. Its other singles, ‘Most Girls’ and ‘You Make Me Sick’, also became top ten hits. The album clocked up double platinum sales.
Before LaFace unleashed its new star on the media, it had suggested she take etiquette classes. Pink flatly refused. Media training was also part of the new-star package, but she had no intention of playing ball. Pink was a refreshing antidote to the cute-as-pie girl singers populating the charts. The media applauded her frankness.
Pink was a refreshing antidote to the cute-as-pie girl singers populating the charts
She hit the road for the first time, undertaking a massive stadium tour as the support act for ’N Sync on their Celebrity tour. Performing in front of tens of thousands of people was daunting even for someone with the amount of attitude Pink displays. The experience left her feeling disconnected with the audience. She was determined to play smaller venues when next she had the chance.
Now living in LA, Pink set up house in a two-bedroom apartment in Venice Beach, a place she’d always wanted to live. Venice Beach didn’t disappoint her. She felt at home in this bohemian, seedy beachside northern LA suburb. During the day, its streets are crowded with artists and hustlers vying for the tourist dollar. After sundown it isn’t the safest place to hang out. For a time Pink kept a gun just in case of unwanted attention. Her apartment was decorated with her collection of ornamental frogs—she has a frog tattooed on her foot—and her pet rats Thelma and Louise. Her Jack Russell terrier also lived with her for a time before her father adopted him. Pink named the dog Fucker so she could shock passers-by when she had to call him. At twenty-one she was still the rebellious teen.
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