Posted July 7, 200916 yr By Claire Harvey July 05, 2009 12:00am INSIDE the Entertainment Centre on a chilly weeknight, Alecia Moore is getting ready for her show. The artist formally known as Pink - or P!nk, as her merchandise department prefers - is about to launch into a hugely entertaining two-hour spectacular of dance, song and acrobatics. Pink will dangle from the ceiling in a purple court jester outfit. She'll skip around - actually skip - in super-high black heels. She'll pay homage to the household gods of babedom in a skin-tight body suit of nude fabric, criss-crossed with white ribbon - it's the granddaughter of that black seat belt Cher wore in her Turn Back Time video clip (although tonight's crowd is so young they think Cher is something to do with illegal downloading). The catsuit-ancestry is no coincidence: Pink's costumier, Bob Mackie, is the sequin svengali behind Cher's behind, and Pink has a clear sense of pop history. This 29-year-old is a complete performer. She sings like Steven Tyler, dances like Beyonce, charms like Robbie Williams, cracks wise like Bette Midler, touches herself like Chrissie Amphlett and yowls with the voicebox - and the tight pants - of a young Robert Plant. What's more, she markets like Coca-Cola - and that is the foundation of the 58-gig roadshow she's trundling across Australia. A van outside the Entertainment Centre is where Pink's sales team makes it all pay: a five-deep queue of early-teen girls and their mothers, sales are robust, although there's plenty of please-mum wheedling and counting of pocket-money. T-shirts are $50. Socks are $40 a pair. You can have a key-ring for $10 or a lanyard that looks sort-of-not-really like a roadie's backstage pass for $20. For the studious Pinkette, there are library bags for $25. And this is my favourite: panties for $50 a pair. Little girls' panties, in black and, obviously, pink. The one item of merchandise that's not for sale is recorded music: there are no CDs, no vinyl, no iTunes vouchers. These are the depressing economics of modern rock. Piracy, streaming and file-sharing have all shredded traditional revenue sources. Fans have decided recorded music is effectively free - if we pay for music at all, it's with a grudging sense of old-fashioned values or the kindness of our hearts. That has forced musicians out on the road; the internet has restored live music to its rightful position at the top of the authenticity register. Music's intimacy isn't between you and your headphones, it's between you and your idol, as long as you can ignore the cellphone-waving hordes. I get that. I'm not blaming Pink for the web, or suggesting she's any different from Madonna or Coldplay or Green Day or any other pop juggernaut. Except for this: Pink has always claimed she is different. Carefully, she has cultivated herself as the opposite of Britney, the remedy to Jessica Simpson, the anti-Cristina. "I'm sick of being compared to damn Britney Spears," she sang in 2002's Don't Let Me Get Me, the song that, fittingly, brought her to the attention of Spears' mainstream audience for the first time. But then she appeared in a Pepsi commercial - with Britney. In that same lyrical breath, Pink had slammed her old record-label boss, L.A. Reid, for telling her to change everything about herself if she wanted to be successful - except that she was still signed to Reid's label, LaFace, and is now the label's most lucrative name. More recently, Pink said she had refused to write a song for Spears because she didn't think of Britney as an artist. "The only people I write for are real singers - not that she's not a real singer, but she's more of an entertainer. When I mean real singers, I mean the likes of Lauryn Hill, Faith Hill - and I'd write for Amy Winehouse , because you need serious attitude to carry off the dumb stuff I write about," Pink said in 2007. But what's the difference, apart from that Pink - despite all her talk about booze and bar-fights, is far too professional and savvy to ever get wasted on YouTube, or to slur her way through an interview? The reason six Pink recordings are in the ARIA physical album charts right now is that they're co-written and produced by the same people who bring you Britney, Ricky Martin, the Backstreet Boys and Kelly Clarkson - people like the pop guru Max Martin (who wrote Pink's hit So What) and Billy Mann. I'm hugely admiring of Alecia Moore; her voice, athleticism, charisma, intelligence and genuine charm. She seems a decent, thoughtful, fun person, as well as a stupendous performer. I think she's got twice the talent of any of the women she criticises. If Pink really wants to occupy feisty feminist rock territory, maybe she should stop letting her label flog $50 knickers to little girls from the suburbs. They're not worth that much. Source: Daily Telegraph
