Stupid Girls was released as the lead single from I’m Not Dead in February 2006. It was written by Pink, Billy Mann, Niklas Olovson and Robin Mortensen Lynch. It was released with the b-side Heartbreaker.
Stupid Girls entered the U.s Billboard Hot 100 chart in late February 2006 at number 24 and was the week’s highest debut. It later climbed to number 13, becoming Pink’s eighth top 20 single in the United States. In Canada the single reached number two on the Canadian Singles Chart. In Australia it entered at number four on the ARIA Singles chart and is certified gold for sales of over 35,000. In the UK Stupid Girls peaked at number 4 on the Singles Chart.
Stupid Girls has be praised by fans and critics for its lyrical content of promoting intelligence in women and girls. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said on her official website that “Stupid Girls is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness.”
She has rarely been as pointed in her socio-political views as in the hit “Stupid Girls”(…) “Stupid Girls is musically a dance/hip hop gem
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Stupid Girls was nominated in the category of Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2007 Grammy Awards.
Lyrics (click image below)
The Music Video
The music video for Stupid Girls was directed by Dave Meyers and premiered on MTV’s broadband channel Overdrive in late January 2006.
The music video was shot at the same time as U + Ur Hand (also directed by Meyers), before a decision was made as to which would become the album’s lead single.
Pink describes the video as “sick and twisted and insane” and said of Dave Meyers “He has an insane imagination. I don’t think everyone else is going to laugh, but just know that we all did.”
According to Barry Weiss, president of Zomba Music Group, executives at Pink’s label were reluctant to release the song as the album’s first single until the video “hit a chord” with them. They decided to release the video before issuing the song to radio, and 8.6 million people downloaded the video when it was made available on the internet. Zomba’s senior vice president of marketing Janet Kleinbaum said that radio programmers “went online to download the audio from the video in order to get it on radio”.
The video shows Pink as an angel and a demon who try to influence the future of a young girl. The angel shows her a series of images demonstrating the stupidity of current trends in female celebrities, and the images feature Pink in various roles, including a dancer in a 50 Cent video, a girl attempting to attract the attention of an instructor at the gym, a girl who uses her emergency inflatable breasts at a bowling alley, a girl at a tanning salon, a girl with purging disorder who considers calories “so not sexy”, an old woman in a pink tracksuit who looks as if she is trying too hard to look young, a girl getting plastic surgery, a girl making a sex tape, a girl washing her car and rubbing a facecloth and soap all over herself, and a girl who goes into what looks like a pet shop, buys an “itsy bitsy doggy” with the advertisement that it “stays younger longer”, and drives her car so carelessly while putting on makeup that she runs over two people. Pink also plays characters meant to represent the opposite of “stupid girls”, such as a female president and a girl winning a game of football. The video ends with the girl choosing a football (fitness), a computer (work), books (knowledge and adequate education), dance shoes (love), and a keyboard (leisure) over makeup (vanity) and a set of dolls (children) as she wants a normal life and the images are too overwhelming for her; the demon is defeated.
Some of the negatively portrayed characters in the video are parodies of young female celebrities such as Mary-Kate Olsen, who provides the basis for the Boho-chic dressing style of the girl who visits a Fred Segal clothing store. The redheaded girl who accidentally hits pedestrians with her car is a parody of Lindsay Lohan. The scene in which Pink washes a car in a bikini is a parody of similar scenes in the video for Jessica Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” (2005) and a 2005 Carl’s Jr. television commercial featuring Paris Hilton. The digital video shots showing Pink in bed with a man parallel those in the Paris Hilton sex tape 1 Night in Paris. The scene where Pink portrays a blonde coming into a bathroom throwing up food in order to be skinny (portraying bulimia) is reported to be portraying Nicole Richie. Towards the end in the video, a middle-aged woman with leathery skin appears next to a hot pink Honda S2000, which is exactly the same car driven by Devon Aoki in the film 2 Fast 2 Furious.
The video debuted on the U.S. MTV Total Request Live countdown in January and peaked at number six; it remained on the countdown for fourteen days. The video was retired on the Poland version of MTV’s Total Request Live, and it won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Pop Video in August 2006. When she was receiving the award, Pink parodied Paris Hilton by talking in a higher pitched voice and acting overly excited. Nicole Richie co-presented the award.
Stupid Girls has been performed on the I’m Not Dead Tour and the Funhouse Tour, as well as other TV and award show performances.
I’m Not Dead Tour
Funhouse Tour
Top of the Pops
The Logie Awards
The Ellen Show
Hit Machine
Coca Cola Live
AVO Sessions
The Jonathan Ross Show
NYC Flashmob
On This Day in Pink History... 