How Pink went from dealing meth at 14 and feuding with major pop star to become music’s unlikeliest superstar
DO you know the most listened-to female artist in the UK? No, it’s not Taylor Swift or Beyonce.
Pop punk Pink, 43, has the most TV and radio plays for a female artist since 2000, beating other divas including Madonna, Lady Gaga and even Whitney Houston.
And she is set to steal the show this summer with two headlining sets in Hyde Park alongside Guns N’ Roses and Take That.
With a history of drug addiction, homelessness and an on-off marriage, her journey to superstardom has come with no shortage of personal trauma.
But one thing fans can be sure of is she won’t hold her tongue about that.
She delighted her audience in Bolton last week by opening up about her rocky 17-year marriage to motocross racer Carey Hart.
After singing hit Please Don’t Leave Me, she gleefully told the crowd: “This is what they teach you in marriage counselling: Remorse, regret, resolution. I’ll start that tomorrow.”
Performing her Summer Carnival Tour this weekend in Sunderland’s Stadium of Light marked 23 years since her first UK Top Ten single, with angsty There You Go landing at No6.
She has gone on to sell more than 60million albums and 75million singles worldwide, picking up three Grammy awards.
With her shorn, vivid pink hairdo, boyish figure and bags of attitude, Pink somehow managed to straddle the gap between being punk rock but also Top Of The Pops-friendly, a combination that helped make her now worth more than £160million.
Clean at 15
Brand expert and cultural commentator Nick Ede said: “She is an authentic pop star who wears her heart on her sleeve and produces heartfelt, honest music.
“She’s the perfect antidote to saccharine-sweet polished pop. She is following close on the heels of Beyonce’s sell-out spectaculars by bringing her carnival to life but UK audiences are here for it as they just don’t know what to expect.”
Pink — real name Alecia Moore-Hart — has had three UK number ones, with Just Like A Pill, Lady Marmalade and So What. In total, she’s had 21 UK top 10s.
But it is her acrobatic live shows that have captured the imagination of fans.
Her Pink Summer Carnival Tour will see her perform in Birmingham’s Villa Park tomorrow and at the British Summer Time festival this month before going on to Europe, America and Australia for the final leg.
In her early days Pink was immediately compared to pop princesses such as Britney Spears, which soon led to very public beefs.
In 2001 she recorded a cover version of Lady Marmalade for the movie soundtrack of Moulin Rouge with Mya, Lil’ Kim and Christina Aguilera.
But she soon butted heads with chart rival Christina.
Pink said: “She was upset that I was sitting in her chair and was going to shut down the entire production.
“Like, you can’t talk to me any kind of way. So you know, you picked the wrong one. But that’s over.”
The one-time staunch vegetarian even publicly rejected Prince William’s request for her to perform at his 21st in 2003, citing issues with the royals’ position on hunting.
Little wonder, looking at her childhood in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Pink has no time for playing nice.
She was raised by her mum Judith, a nurse, and dad Jim, a Vietnam war veteran who became an insurance salesman.
They divorced when she was young.
Pink ditched her first love, gymnastics, aged just 12 and soon immersed herself in punk rock and drug taking.
She claims to have smoked weed and had her first tattoo — a Japanese symbol for good luck — when still a teen.
This is what they teach you in marriage counselling: Remorse, regret, resolution.
Pink last week
She confessed: “My mom didn’t know. She freaked out.”
She was smoking a pack of cigarettes per day at 13 and taking and dealing drugs at 14.
She said: “I was a hard-core partyer from 12 to 15. I was like a candy raver and I was on all the club drugs, selling Ecstasy and crystal meth and Special K (ketamine).”
It was at 14 that she first began performing in bars in Philadelphia.
Her friends gave her the nickname after sassy Reservoir Dogs film character Mr Pink.
But the party lifestyle brought tragedy when one of her best friends, Sekou Harris, overdosed on heroin when they were 14.
The death inspired her 2006 single Who Knew, with lyrics “Until we meet again/And I won’t forget you my friend.”
It wasn’t until Pink was kicked out by her mother and suffered an overdose of her own aged 15 that she changed her ways.
At a New Year’s Eve party she collapsed after smoking weed as well as taking cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth, angel dust and nitrous oxide.
The incident scared her off hard drugs for life.
She said: “Then I was clean . . . at 15.”
Soon music proved a saviour when, aged 16, she signed a record deal with girlband Choice.
Three years in, producers urged her to go solo, which she did and lost her record deal overnight, leaving her homeless and often camping out at friends’ houses.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a record exec aged 18 that things changed for her.
She said: “This publisher walked in and said, ‘What would it take to get you to sign a publishing deal?’
“I’m broke at this point, I have like $20. And I go, ‘One million dollars!’
“I was joking. And he goes, ‘OK, I’ll see you on Monday’. I was like, ‘Huh? S**t, I should have said two!’”
She soon released a string of angsty but mainstream hits including No.1s Just Like A Pill and So What.
With her short hair, boyish outfits and muscular physique, the singer told how in the noughties she was put under pressure to reveal if she was gay.
But she has spoken out about how she has refused to define her sexuality or succumb to stereotypes.
She said: “I’ve never felt the need to. I still don’t.”
In 2001 she met racer Carey at a motocross rally, and from the get go the relationship has been intense.
He told People magazine: “I knew within the first few weeks after meeting her that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life.”
While Pink recently said: “Carey and I have been in couple’s counselling almost our entire 17 years we’ve been together. It’s the only reason we’re still together.”
They briefly split in 2003 and Pink enjoyed romances with Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee and L Word actress Kristanna Loken.
But by 2004 they were back on and married in 2006 after Pink popped the question with a “will you marry me?” sign at one of his races.
Yet only two years later the couple separated again — with Carey facing rumours of infidelity.
I was a hard-core partyer from 12 to 15. I was like a candy raver and I was on all the club drugs.
Pink on her childhood
Pink’s publicist said in 2008: “Pink and Carey Hart have separated. This decision was made by best friends with a huge amount of love and respect for one another.”
During the split, Pink wrote single So What, in which she calls Carey “a tool”.
Not offended, he even appeared in the music video, and later said: “It’s flattering that she’s writing songs about me, calling me a tool and selling millions of albums doing it.
“It’s pretty special to be the muse — it’s the good, the bad, the ugly. I wouldn’t expect anything else. That’s why I love her, and why we’re together.”
Within a year the couple were back on, with Pink delivering a lingerie-clad ultimatum backstage at his club in Las Vegas.
She said: “I made him a photo album of all the cards he had given me, of all the photos of our relationship.
“I spent months on this album. On the last page I pasted a photo of me from a really bad movie I made years ago with my neck slit and blood every where.
“Next to it I wrote, ‘This is me without you’. On the next page there was a picture of a baby. And I wrote, ‘The rest is unwritten’. The divorce papers that we never signed were behind that page.
The couple quickly went on to have daughter Willow Sage, now 12, and Jameson Moon, six.
Pink revealed in 2017 that she was raising Willow in a gender neutral way.
She said: “We are a very label-less household.”
Little Willow, who sometimes performs live with her mum, couldn’t be any more different from her parents.
Pink said: “Willow is such a rule follower, which is so weird to me. She gets straight A’s and she’s brilliant. I’m like, ‘Who are you? You didn’t come out of me!’”
But Pink confessed Willow has been a good influence on her.
She said: “I honestly can’t believe how responsible I am.
“All of a sudden I’m a soccer mom and doing the damn thing.
“No one would have guessed this for me. Honestly, I didn’t realise that you could enjoy it so much.”
Most played female artists of the 21st century in the UK:
1. Pink
2. Madonna
3. Katy Perry
4. Rihanna
5. Lady Gaga
6. Adele