A Phil Spector soundalike, handclap-accompanied drumtrack starts up on the album. A sultry-slutty bassline joins in. And then we move onto The Truth About Love, the album’s superb centrepiece, and perhaps the centrepiece of Pink’s career thus far. To me, that is, sure you will have your thoughts on that potentially controversial statement. Here Pink stumbles into the artistic ring, loud rowdy crowd cheering. She’s ready to take on her whole songwriting career and its meaning in one winner-takes-all-or-nothing grudge match. But who wins when you fight yourself, and all of lyrical writing history as well? Can there even ever be a winner? Let’s find out…
“The truth about love comes at 3 a.m.
You wake up fucked up and you grab a pen
And you say to yourself
I’m gonna figure it out
I’m gonna crack that code
Gonna break it break it down
I’m tired of all these questions
And now it’s just annoying
‘Cause no-one has the answer
So I guess it’s up to me
To find the truth about love”
Right from the get-go, the frustration-singed singer is showing how important writing is to her. She keeps a pen and paper ready to write down whatever tantalising mercurial lyrical sludge has gone through her wrecked-poet brain as she slept, and thinks it important enough she needed to write it down upon waking. Writing love (and hate) songs is her reason for artistic existence, her legacy bread and butter, her method of plugging into the modern lyrical star galaxy of all-time-great writers, and by fuck she will not miss this current shot at that classic-poetry-writing goal! Once again, it’s a nice use of dialogue that melds seamlessly into more stylised lyricism.
Pink’s tried to write a perfect love song a million times, but never cracked that ‘code,’ so now here she goes again…and again…and again. Of course, it’s a meaningless quest, and on some level she knows it is, and it annoys the shit out of her. But those pesky universal worldwide hits won’t just write themselves, unfortunately. Those tireless wired words just won’t leave her alone, even when she’s sleeping, like a slumber-killing housefly buzzing mockingly round her groggy head.
So maybe if she can finally write the one single simple song with all her
thoughts about the biggest subject in the world in music…she can finally
eternally rest in nailed-it poetic peace.
No chance. And she loves and hates that. Which is part of the truth about love,
of course. Because love here represents not just love between people, and love
of songwriting, but also love of writing and words in general. This is a very
complex three-pronged fork she’s attacking the subject matter with, in a
windmill-charging attempt to show us nothing but the artistic contents of her
mind. And to explain herself and her obsessions to herself, obviously, cos art
is nothing but navel-gazing externalised and shared anyway.
“Is it comes and it goes
A strange fascination with lips and toes
Morning breath, bedroom eyes on a
smiling face
Sheet marks rug burn and a sugar glaze
The shock and the awe that can eat you
raw
Is this the truth about love?”
The truth about love, as is goes (and it comes), is that it’s a fleshlight
slideshow full of sexual, sensual images, attractive (‘bedroom eyes on a
smiling face’) and repellent (‘morning breath’) and poetic oral sexy (‘the
shock and the awe that can eat you raw’). It’s the initial endorphin crushing
rush of sugar glaze orgasm, and the shock and awe of an initial sexual
encounter with a new lover.
But it never lasts, going eventually from shuddering orgasm to boredom spasm:
“I think you just may be perfect
You’re the person of my dreams
I’ve never, ever, ever, ever been this happy
But now something has changed
And the truth about love is it’s all a
lie
I thought you were the one, and I hate
goodbyes”
Pink equates the dream drama of the first paragraph here with her now-spurned
lover, mixing both writing and sex: the initial attraction of what she has
written has turned out, in the cool light of waking day, to not be as hot and
bothered as she thought it was the night before, and the guy has turned out to
be the much the same:
“Oh, you want the truth?”
More spoken dialogue, as Pink addresses both the audience and her own inner
artistic voice, urging herself on to more realistic, sleazy depictions of
whatever the fuck this four-letter-word thing love is. It’s confession session
time, and she’s not sure that she, or we, can handle the naked truth:
“The truth about love is it’s nasty and salty
It’s the regret in the morning
It’s the smelling of armpits
It’s wings, and songs, and trees, and
birds,
It’s all the poetry that you ever heard
Terror coup d’etat, life line
forget-me-nots
It’s the hunt and the kill
The schemes and the plots”
I have to say, I just totally love this whole section of the song, from start to finish. You have to admit, it’s rare for a mainstream song to reference the taste of bodily fluids! It can either be another one night stand song, or a song about the regret of getting back with an ex and soberly realising the next day you should never have done so.
Whatever the lack of truth about love is here, the lyrics start to fragment, almost in desperation, trying to save fading fragments of the love-meaning dream, trying to grasp at some sort of meaning for everything that’s happened the night before, from visceral and real (‘the smelling of armpits’) to clichéd-poetic (‘wings and songs and trees and birds’) to absolutely beautiful and perfect poetic lyrics (‘terror coup-d’etat, life line forget-me-nots’). It all tumbles down a flight of representational stairs until it lands in a negative fumbled thudding jumble at the bottom.
“The truth about love is it’s blood and it’s guts
Purebreds and mutts
Sandwiches without the crust
It takes your breath ‘cause it leaves a scar
But those untouched never got never got very far
It’s rage and it’s hate, and a sick twist of fate
And that’s the truth about love”
I confess, this section of the song (which I just broke in two from the previous part to discuss) kind of makes me laugh. ‘Purebreds and mutts/sandwiches without the crust’ just speaks, to me, so much of (what I imagine to be) Pink’s views about what poetry is more than any man-on-woman dealings and failings. It all seems to me like a reference to the poetic canon in general, how the singer perceives so-called ‘poets’ and how they are ‘purebreds’ who eat ‘sandwiches without the crust.’
It seems oddly like an American’s extremely deluded view of England and English poets, though that’s only my own (sp)interpretation, and she could be referencing the upper middle class American Harvard snotty verse-pimping types as well. She’s nailing her own feelings of inferiority towards writing what she regards to be poetry with ‘purebreds,’ and feeling like she’s left wanting.
Of course, what she hasn’t quite realised or grasped, though she does touch upon it with the line ‘It’s all the poetry that you ever heard’ (note: for her, poetry is not read, it’s heard in song lyrics) earlier, is that writing a poem and writing a song including wannabe-poetic lyrics are two vastly different things altogether. A song (mostly) has to have music, lyrics, and a singer. When all three come together, no matter how good or bad the lyrics, the running together of the sounds and words can be a special kind of sonic poetry in itself.
With the words in this song, and the vocal and musical performances, she has created a real work of poetic art: busy, confused, poignant, sexy, frustrated, pristine, gutsy. She’s been barking up all the wrong artistic trees in her search for poetic expression perfection, never quite seeing the artistic wood for the trees (and birds!) in front of her narrow bloodshot hungover eyes.
(An aside: the old line from The Smiths “No it’s not like any other love/this one is different because it’s us” just came randomly to mind, and that pretty much sums things up quite neatly)
“Oh you can lose your breath and
Oh you can shoot a gun and
Convinced you’re the only one
That’s ever felt this way before
It hurts inside the hurt within and
It folds together pocket thin and
It’s whispered by the angels’ lips and
It can turn you into a sonofabitch, man!”
This is another great bit of the song. It’s clearly modelled on Annie Lennox’s stunning, transported vocal performance in the classic 1985 song by The Eurhythmics There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) where the Scottish singer just lets her voice swoop and soar in Heavenly rapture at her own attempt at nailing the truth about angelic love from above:
Of course, this being America-vs-Europe, Pink mentions shooting a gun as a way for an explosion of artistic frustration to come to a head. Because of who she is, Pink’s version of Annie’s rapture is an altogether dirtier, grittier thing. But I think she still manages to get to get it down perfectly: it’s just a different style, is all.
The trials and tribulations of romantic love, the pain of love, writing about the truth about the hurt of love, the pain of not getting down its meaning on paper that ‘folds together pocket thin’ as you try to scribble what the angels are saying can ‘turn you into a sonofabitch, man!’ The last line there is such just a brilliant way to finish that stanza, pure Pink, that mix of pained-brain poetry and frustrated American belligerence at thinking she hasn’t got what the ‘cultured’ transatlantic poets and singers have. She’s wrong, of course, as her worldwide sales continue to attest to after two full decades in the artistic limelight.
It’s a strangely poignant thing. In the context of the song, Pink is looking for love in one night stands (with an ex or a stranger), but those only make pain grow worse as there is nothing romantic about them, and the singer clearly has a romantic streak in her a mile wide and two miles deep. It’s confused and masochistic, but by no means unusual.
The end of the song finds the singer exhausted, unable to grasp the nonexistent truth about love. She repeats the phrase “The truth about love is” 14 times, as if she can will a revelation to come to her by repeating this mantra, until, defeated, the last line is just “The truth about love.” There is no ‘is’ on the end of that last line, so the ‘truth’ will have to wait forever and a day.
And that, gentle reader, is about as much analysis of Pink’s lyrics that I care to do for you, you’ll be pleased to know.
Away from writing, this inability to come to terms with interpersonal affection seems to mirror the troubles she has had over the years with her husband Carey. A major lyrical theme of Pink’s is finding love difficult to accept when it is offered, scared to let others in because of the lingering, echoing pain of the trauma of her parents’ divorce, and her subsequent self-destructive mid-teenage trajectory.
It’s poignant, and a bit sad, and a lot of people go through it in the modern schizoid, alienated, alienating world. Still, she has admirably put a lot of work into keeping her marriage alive, for the sake of her kids. For somebody with such a rebellious, snotty, punky image, Alecia Beth Moore has some pretty traditional marital views. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Anything that keeps kids happy and healthy is fine by me.
Of course, the ‘unhappy, questing artist’ view has thankfully been rendered somewhat obsolete by Pink’s happiness with her two children, Willow and Sage, and her husband Carey over recent years. More power to them all for it. In the self-destructive music world, Pink did things back-asswards (as an American friend of mine once put it), having her rock star overdose at 15 instead of 30. She has been fighting her way back from that ever since, in some ways, to regain innocence lost young, which she now has found in the shape of her two beautiful children.
So everything finally gets to fly free in childhood again, and finding the truth about love is as simple as nothing but a happy, healthy family, and a loving – albeit sometimes maddening – husband. I confess, it would be interesting to talk to her about who her artistic influences are writing-wise, see what her own overview of her career looks like, how she approaches writing a song. A book of choice lyrics illustrating her main lyrical themes, or personal faves, and the thoughts behind them would be illuminating.
“I started to realise that when I am the most uncomfortable and the most vulnerable and saying the most honest, shameful shit, that’s what’s getting to somebody else. And I’m basically having therapy and somebody else is getting something from it” – Pink.
One other thing I do
find interesting, in a general way, is that Pink has been in therapy for so
many years with the same woman, celebrity psychologist Vanessa Inn. The singer
clearly holds this woman’s opinion in high regard. In an Instagram interview
from June last year, they discussed various things, including Covid, lockdown,
etc. They talked about inspiration and art, and Pink said she wrote the
poignant song Conversations With My 13 Year Old Self after a session the two
had. They also discuss books, which basically consist of self-help and sociology
manuals Pink is reading, and Inn approves of:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBofWR2Jiu4/
Thinking about this did make me idly wonder how much this long-term
relationship has affected Pink’s worldview and lyric writing. She said in an
interview she had wanted to be a social worker, as many people who have had
early disruptive experiences do, and, given the quote preceding this paragraph,
she views her work, at least in part, as a way to help her fans out. To them
she’s a mighty woman with an artistic torch, whose flame is the imprisoned
lightning of the singer’s background and song communication, her name Pink, a
mother of exiles on main street. In 2017 she referred to her shows as “like
group therapy,” which is an interesting, unique perspective. The only other
band I can think of with that sort of therapeutic view purposefully built in
are the aforementioned Idles, a cult band with rabidly loyal, often troubled
fans.
Pink has taken to artistically healing people who want or need healed, working
with the mind where her mother, a nurse, worked with the body. She does seem to
mean the world to her fans, and the comments on her videos bear out the effect
her music and general persona and personality have had on them. Her confessional
lyrics fit in perfectly with therapy speak, to such an extent that I idly,
jokingly wondered if a therapist could be considered a co-writer. Still, there’s
definitely an interesting healing and artistic dynamic going on between Pink
and Inn.
It does seem, after a life lived at neckbreak speed, and at high career
velocity, Pink can look forward to writing more for, and collaborating more
with, her daughter Willow and, maybe, as he gets older, her son Jameson.
Anything’s possible. She’s certainly blazing a unique trail, on top of the
unique one already blazed, by collaborating with her daughter in this way.
I
personally don’t recall any other singer collaborating with their offspring
like this, though it may well have happened. It gives a nice through line to
events, from volcanic lavarush singing rebel to quietly (and loudly!) emotionally
satisfied happy mother, a very worthwhile life and art arc. Motherhood as a
life option is frowned upon way too much these days, mostly by jealous childless
people, and it’s great to see it being defended and shared in such a generous,
loving fashion.
Mothers are the most important people in the world, though fathers, who don’t
get enough credit, are damned important too.
And that truly is The Truth About Love.
THE END (OF A SONIC CHAPTER)
PS: There is obviously much more that could be written about Pink and her
career and life; I have barely grazed the surface. I don’t, obviously, know
exactly what lyrics Pink has written, and I do know she has collaborated with a
lot of people over her career. As I said, I only just found out that Trouble
was originally written by Tim Armstrong. So I may be writing about words
occasionally that are not hers, but that’s a chance I have taken – have had to take, really. She presents
herself as the communicator of these words and sentiments as an artistic
entity, so that’s good enough for me. I also find the idea of writing enthusiastically
about words written by somebody else than the artist under discussion to be
funny, too, to be perfectly honest. Credit where none’s due! Hardly matters in
The Grand Scheme Of Things anyway.
PPS: As a bonus track, here’s some more random Pink lyrics from her songs I
like, in no particular chronological order:
“Pink canopies and grass-stained knees
Putting fireflies in a jar
Getting home before it’s dark
Scotch-taping posters on my wall
Rolling pixie sticks to smoke
Couldn’t wait ‘till I was older”
– Barbies.
“I wanna make some mistakes,
I wanna sleep in the mud
I wanna swim in the flood
I wanna fuck ‘till I’m done
I like whiskey on ice, I like sun in my
eyes
I wanna burn it all down, so let’s start
a fire
I wanna be lost, so lost I’m found
Naked and laughing with my
Blood on the ground”
– I Am Here.
“Just throw your head back, and spit in the wind
Let the walls crack, cos it lets the
light in
Let ‘em drag you through Hell
They can’t tell you to change who you
are
And when the storm’s out, you run in the
rain
Put your sword down, dive right into the
pain
Stay unfiltered and loud, you’ll be
proud of
That skin full of scars
That’s all I know so far”
– All I Know So Far.
“I’m not dead, just floating
Right between the ink on your tattoo
In the belly of the beast we turned into”
– I’m Not Dead.
(This was the first song of Pink’s she said was ‘poetic’ in and of itself)
“Rewind and you will see (You will see)
Why in the morning I’m happy (I’m happy)
Right there on the TV screen (on the TV)
(ME VENGO, ME VENGO!”)
– Fingers.
“I’m a willow tree, you can’t blow me over
And my roots go deep in anger
I wanna feel the wind as it
Whips me like a prisoner
I wanna be here
I wanna be here”
– Chaos & Piss.
“So rah rah rah!
Sis boom fuckin’ bah!
There’s a party in your honor
But you won’t be there whatever, so
Three cheers for the one that got away!
You were just blah blah blah
I was oh my god
And unlike your anatomy
I’m glad I had it in me”
– The King Is Dead But
The Queen Is Alive
“Never win first place
I don’t support the team
I can’t take direction
And my socks are never clean
Teachers dated me
My parents hated me
I was always in a fight
Cos I can’t do nothin’ right”
– Don’t Let Me Get Me.
“Yeah, I remember that time we went to Pizza Hut
You told me she was your cousin”
– Hell Wit Ya.
“We realize you had many choices, and on behalf of us all here at Pink
Airlines, we’d like to thank you for flying with us. We hope you have a
wonderful stay wherever your destination may be. And remember, be careful when
retrieving your items, as during the flight they may have shifted and may fall
on you, or your neighbor’s head, and knock you the fuck out”
– Catch 22.
Etc, etc.
THE REAL END
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