Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Though she arrived on the scene at the same time as several other well-known pop divas, singer Alecia Beth Moore, A.K.A. Pink, has always stood out from the pack. Initially marketed as an edgy R&B singer, she did a 180 on her sophomore effort, 2001’s Missundaztood, bringing her rock influences to the fore. She collaborated with Linda Perry before Christina Aguilera, championed LGBTQ rights before Miley Cyrus, and did pretty much whatever the hell she wanted years before Taylor Swift turned artistic independence into a marketing strategy. The new documentary P!nk: All I Know So Far finds her approach to parenting is just as single minded and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Like other celebrity superstars, Pink’s personal life was always on public display. In 2001, she began dating competitive motorcyclist Carey Hart, later proposing marriage during one of his races. They married in 2005 but separated in 2008, which Pink chronicled in her 2008 “So What.” Hart appeared in the video. They reconciled in 2010 and since then have had two children; Willon, born in 2011, and Jameson, born in 2016. Rather then leave her family behind, Pink decided to bring her husband and kids along on the Beautiful Trauma World Tour, which spanned two years and is the second highest-grossing tour of all time by a female solo artist.
“There are many reasons why moms don’t do this,” Pink says early on, shuttling between rehearsals and performances with brood in tow. Her hair often up in a headscarf, she seems like a modern-day Lucille Ball, overseeing everything from dance routines to costume changes to set design. “For a lot of moms, when they become moms and they tour, they stop touring,” Pink says but says touring without her family would also be impossible. She wants her show to be perfect and she wants the tour to be perfect for her family. “The only way I can justify dragging my family all over the world is that we’re making memories together.”
Anytime a camera is turned on, the line between reality and performance is blurred, but if what we see is to be believed, what Pink and Hart have taken on is staggering. During downtime, they interact like any other middle-American family, Pink cooks meals for the kids while Hart feeds them and vice versa. It’s a safe bet most other celebrities of her stature hand off their parenting duties to surrogates. Show days start around 10 a.m. and are full from noon onwards. “Everything is melded into one and that is both beautiful and incredibly overwhelming,” Pink says.
Pink has always worn her wounds on her sleeve. Her parents divorce when she was a child impacted her greatly and she struggled with self-esteem issues and drug abuse. Like many parents, she aspires to spare her children the traumas she suffered in her youth. While practicing a gymnastic routine at London’s Wembley Stadium which takes her hundreds of feet into the air and circling the entire arena, somewhere between flying and walking on air, she ponders her relationship with her children, who have only ever known her as a successful entertainer and experienced the privileges that come with it. She knows as they grow older and wiser and more independent they will discover, “little Alecia, who’s still hiding in here, who’s still learning how to heal.”
Two shows at Wembley serve as the tentpole around which All I Know So Far frames its narrative. Over two nights in June 2019, Pink performed to over 290,000 adoring fans. Leading up to the shows, she reads Hart messages from fans including one who credits Pink’s music with helping her overcome a laundry list of personal challenges including thoughts of suicide. It clearly affects her. Pink calls Hart “that rock and he keeps me from myself,” and his Zen-like demeanor is a source of calm amid the daily disruptions of tour. After the first Wembley show, Pink tries to steal time, playing with her kids despite her obvious exhaustion.
Pink: All I Know So Far is not a concert film, as only two full performances are featured; nor is it simply a bio-doc. It is a documentary in the truest sense, which tells the story of a family of four trying to preserve a sense of normalcy under extraordinary circumstances. As far as global superstars go, Pink seems as genuine as they come, and my takeaway from the film was this is the result of not just her essence but also effort. She might walk through the air in the middle of her show but her feet are always on the ground.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
