Beautiful Trauma

I don’t know why P!nk has never bothered to come and visit Manila for a show. All of music’s top acts have already descended on our chaotic and “hellish” city (that’s according to novelist Dan Brown) and performed before their own sets of adoring fans – and most of them have had great memories with the audience reception here (if we base it on their interviews and social media reactions). Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, her contemporaries whom she has been made comparisons to have performed here several times. I am saying this because Beautiful Trauma, P!nk’s seventh album, released in 2017 has come and gone and still no P!nk tour descending in my city. She has a new album out Hurts 2B Human so let’s see if that gets some traction in the US that would be enough for her to start a tour. Anyhow, going back to Beautiful Trauma, it’s interesting how P!nk has survived the onslaught of new female acts who have consciously or unconsciously followed her template – Halsey, Alessia Cara – come to mind. They don’t belong to the “it” girl category of music but have capitalized on their ‘outsider’ or ‘renegade’ image to establish a following. For P!nk though, she had solid music to back her up since her debut in 2000 and she has sustained it through the years with a mix of danceable hits (“Raise Your Glass”) and power ballads (“Just Give Me A Reason”). However, I only learned about Beautiful Trauma because our dance teacher used “What About Us” as his dance track for hisclass that day. When we were doing the choreography for the song, I suspected it to be a P!nk song but couldn’t point out from which album of hers it came from. He confirmed after the class that it was indeed P!nk’s new song from the Beautiful Trauma album. 2017 was a polarizing year for America with President Trump at the helm so “What About Us” sounds like her big plea to the Donald to listen to “us” – whichever minority group it might be. That the song still reached #13 in the US charts is amazing considering how rap and urban the top echelons of the US music charts have been these past few years. “What About Us” sounds good and hopeful and we interpreted it in my teacher’s dance class but there are several other songs in this album which I like very much.