This article will be published in the next edition of the Green Left Weekly. They are an actual PAPER SOLID STATE HARD COPY type publication. This is the first time I have ever been published, other than self-publication.

Playing P!NK makes my indie-snob friends roll their eyes at me. “Her music is so… POP” they comment, with snorts of derision. My reply is always “Oh, you haven’t watched her video’s have you?”

P!NK is clever. P!NK is controversial. P!NK is filling a niche that most of us ignore.

P!NK understands teenagers. She says: “I don’t buy that shit – [airy fairy] ‘oh, 16 year olds don’t know what the hell’s going on.’ Please: 16 year olds are reading the newspaper, they’re politicised.”

P!NK’s music may sound like your every day pop, but its far from the kind of poisonous misogynistic drivel that most pop diva’s feed our young women. So many people heard P!NK’s first album, ‘Can’t Take Me Home’, and wrote her off, as just another Pop Princess. After that album, P!NK took herself to a new producer and demanded more control over the production process. Her second album ‘Mizzunderstood’ clearly shows the difference, one of the songs says: “LA told me; ‘You’ll be a pop star, all you have to do, is change everything you are’”.

Now though, P!NK is not compromising one bit, as she is her own independent musical force. Her latest album, ‘I’m Not Dead’ is the most political yet.

Under their glittery pop-music beat, her songs deal with hard issues. “A Long Way to Happy” is written about P!NK’s own experience with sexual abuse. “Family Portrait” is about her parents divorce, “I have seen the Rain” is about soldiers suffering PTSD. “Who Knew” isn’t a regular song about a break up, its about losing a lover to a drug overdose.

P!NK’s just warming up though; her claws come out when she takes a shot at popular culture and its treatment of women. “Stupid Girls” with its hilarious video parodying hollywood socialites, and empowering message for girls, was downloaded 8.6 MILLION times before the single was even released. “U + UR Hand” with its sexy, but subversive video, goes on to celebrate female independence, and tells girls that its ok to say NO to a guy, even if he bought that drink for you.

The most exciting song though, is ‘Dear Mr President’, which spent months at the top of the charts in 2007, until even *I* got sick of seeing the video on MTV. This song is heavily political, and asks the questions P!NK would ask if she could go for a walk with President Bush. The Chorus is:

Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing ’bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

She also asks “what kind of father would hate his own daughter if she were gay” and taunts the president saying that he has “come a long way from whiskey and cocaine”.

P!NK is an important cultural phenomenon. She’s a pop artist, there is no doubt about that, but if you look closer, you can see how she is bringing satire, politics, independent thought, and questions about society to a generation that is being raised trapped by a new kind of feminine subservience.

She is a role model, with more than twenty tattoo’s, a foul mouth, and loud political opinions. Her physique is muscular, she swings from trapezes, and dances with blow up dolls at her concerts. She declares herself President P!NK and makes crude oil free, and same-sex marriage legal when fooling around with her crew backstage in a documentary. She is a woman full of strength, energy and power. She has mass appeal.

If I had a teenage daughter, I would much rather her want to be like P!NK, than any other young female celebrity in the media today.