On This Day in Pink History… 8th June 2002, Pink was on Much Music

On This Day in Pink History… 3rd April 2002 Pink Performed at Scala, London

Setlist:

• Get The Party Started
• Missundaztood
• Just Like A Pill
• Family Portrait
• My Vietnam
• Don’t Let Me Get Me
• Numb
• There You Go

On This Day in Pink History… 19th February 2002, Don’t Let Me Get Me was released

Don’t Let Me Get Me was released as the second single from Pink’s second album, Missundaztood.

Lyrics

The song earned positive reports from music critics, but most gave sensitively mixed reviews upon her self-hating lyrical content. Robert Christgau in his consumer guide for MSN wrote that “Despite Pink’s audacious claim that she’s not as pretty as ‘damn Britney Spears,’ celebrity anxiety takes a backseat to a credible personal pain rooted in credible family travails, a pain held at bay by expression.” Jim Farber of Entertainment Weekly wrote that “In Don’t Let Me Get Me, she turns self-loathing into a perverse kind of anthem.”

Jason Thompson of PopMatters wrote, “on the power rock of ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me,’ Pink herself tells it like it is and attempts to break free from the image making machine. ‘Tired of being compared / To damn Britney Spears / She’s so pretty / That just ain’t me.’ Well, that’s debatable in itself, but the fact that Pink takes it upon herself to call Spears out should be nothing short of revelatory. Spears certainly has nothing on Pink in the vocal department. Pink can actually sing. And damn well, mind you.”

Jim Alexander wrote a negative review, saying that the rest of Missundaztood is full of bad songs and that “‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’ and ‘Dear Diary’ see all pop joy expunged for acoustic seriousness, dreary unobtrusive beats and lyrics about relationship woes and record company badness.”

Wikipedia

Peak Chart Positions:

• Australia – 8
• Germany – 10
• New Zealand – 1
• UK – 6
• US Billboard Hot 100 – 8

On This Day in Pink History… 20th November 2001, Missundaztood was released

In 2001, Pink released her second album Missundaztood. The album was different to Pink’s debut R&B Can’t Take Me Home, as it leads towards rock and pop. She recruited 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry to help her with writing a new album.

Pink worked with Perry on most of the songs of the album, who also contributed guest vocals on “Lonely Girl”. Other guest vocals are provided by Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi on “Misery”. Other writers that worked on the album are Scott Storch and Dallas Austin.

Different subjects are touched upon on Missundaztood. In “Don’t Let Me Get Me” she tackles teenage angst and “Just like a Pill” she describes her drug abuse as a teenager. Pink’s father was sent to serve in the Vietnam war which made such an impression on her that she used the stories of her father in the song “My Vietnam”. Towards the end of the song is a sonic interpolation of Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner.” “Family Portrait” tackles divorce and its effects.

There are claims that say that the song “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera was first intended to be sung by Pink, as the song was also written by Perry. Pink claimed the song but Perry did not give it to her because she was waiting for someone else and she was not ready to record the song.

According to VH1’s Driven, Antonio “LA” Reid of LaFace Records wasn’t initially content with the new music Pink was making, because she had made a name for herself with her successful R&B debut.

At the 2003 Grammy Awards “Missundaztood” was nominated for “Best Pop Vocal Album” and “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance”, respectively. At the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, “Get the Party Started” won in the categories “Best Female Video” and “Best Dance Video”. Many of the songs on the album contain strong language, and the song “18 Wheeler” in particular, contained many expletives. However, the album was censored in order to avoid a Parental Advisory sticker. No uncensored studio versions of “18 Wheeler” exist, but Pink performs the song uncensored while on tour.

In the U.S., three different editions of Missundaztood were released in total: the first edition was the original version released in 2001 with an enhanced portion on the disc, which—if put in your computer—let you listen to the international song “Catch 22”, and gave you access to a photo gallery, sing-alongs, and more. The second version released was the main album reissued, but without the enhanced CD portion. A third version, which was a limited edition that included a bonus DVD (the contents of the CDs were the same) was released for a limited time in 2002 and included the two music videos and two live performances. Both the limited edition with the bonus DVD and the enhanced CD versions have since gone out of print, and the initial 2001 release is the only version of the album still in print. It was released outside the US with an extra track, “Catch 22”. Also, on current pressings of the album, the track “Misery” is slightly different. On current pressings, Steven Tyler sings an entire verse as opposed to a providing only few lines and background vocals. On initial pressings of the album, Pink sang all the verses, including the one that Tyler sings on current pressings of the album. The first version of the album that contains the version of Misery where Pink sings Tyler’s verse was not on a specific pressing run, as even some copies the first version of the album released (with the enhanced content) have the current version of the song. It is somewhat hard to find editions of the album with the original version of the song.

Wikipedia

There were four singles released from the album:

• Get The Party Started
• Don’t Let Me Get Me
• Just Like A Pill
• Family Portrait

Tracklist:

1. Missundaztood
2. Don’t Let Me Get Me
3. Just Like A Pill
4. Get The Party Started
5. Respect (feat. Scratch)
6. 18 Wheeler
7. Family Portrait
8. Misery (feat. Steven Tyler)
9. Dear Diary
10. Eventually
11. Lonely Girl (feat. Linda Perry)
12. Numb
13. Gone To California
14. My Vietnam
15. Catch 22 (bonus track)

The album debuted at number eight on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling 220,000 copies in its first week of release, a higher chart and sales debut than that of Pink’s first album, Can’t Take Me Home (2000). In its fifth week, when it was at number ten, the album sold 323,000 copies. It sold 73,000 copies in its eighth week and rose to number six on the chart; this was its peak position. The album being the second biggest selling album by female artist in 2002, behind Avril Lavigne debut album Let Go. As of July 2014, it had sold 5,628,000 copies in the U.S.

In the UK the album peaked at #2 in the album chart and eventually manage to sell 1.8 million copies, receiving a 5× Platinum certification (however, it is eligible for 6× Platinum). The success was so huge that as of November 2006, the album was ranked ninety-fourth on the Official UK Charts Company’s all-time best-selling albums list. In 2010 it was ranked the 37th best-selling album of the 2000s in the UK.

Wikipedia

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On This Day in Pink History… 17th July 2002, Pink performed on Good Morning America

On This Day in Pink History… 15th June 2002, Pink performed at Wango Tango

Setlist:

• Get The Party Started
• Missundaztood
• Just Like A Pill
• Don’t Let Me Get Me
• Janie’s Got A Gun
• Misery (with Steven Tyler)

On This Day in Pink History 10th June 2002, Just Like A Pill was released

Just Like A Pill was written and produced by Dallas Austin and Pink for her second studio album, Missundaztood. In June 2002, it was released as the third single from the album with great commercial success, peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Just Like A pill became her first number one single in the UK, and reached the top 10 in many countries including Ireland, France and Sweden. Although the song was only released as a radio only single in Australia (a physical release was never eventuated), it was a number 1 radio hit. In late June 2009, the song charted at number 97 on downloads, mostly likely due to Pink’s Funhouse Tour.

The song was generally well received by contemporary music critics. NME called it “the third best track off her killer last album”.Drowned In Sound’s Robert Luckett commented that it is “a fascinating record…this is a record with a edge, a kind of pot boiling over at any moment, ready to go off at any time vibe.” He also wrote “it obeys the pop industry’s well-dusted rules for a hit.”Stylus Magazine’s Todd Burns, in his review of the album, compared “Just Like a Pill” to the other singles from the album, “Don’t Let Me Get Me” and “Get the Party Started”, writing “The guitars… sound much more integrated into the work and the overall song works far better.”

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The video for “Just Like a Pill” was directed by Francis Lawrence for LaFace Records. The video for the song is considerably different from Pink’s previous videos. “Get the Party Started” and “Don’t Let Me Get Me” were lighter in nature than the dark atmosphere which is reflected in the video for “Just like a Pill”, an example of which is the fact that Pink can be seen throughout the whole video wearing black outfits with naked arms and legs and wearing black hair. In the first scene, Pink lies on the floor. In the chorus she sings in front of her band. She is also featured in another scene with white rabbits around her in a room, and in another scene, she is seen with an elephant. There are also scenes with Pink singing in front of and amongst various people. In the latter half of the video, she runs in a hall whilst lip-synching the song, before disappearing into a bright doorway atop a staircase at the conclusion of the video.

In the video, Pink is seen sitting in front of an elephant. After the elephant had been on the set, she saw the abuse and captivity the animal was in. “Pink learned about the abuse of captive elephants when a trainer brought one onto the set of her ‘Just Like a Pill’ video. She could see that something was wrong and she called us to learn more about the issue. Now, Pink would like to see circuses pack their trunks”, according to PETA spokesman Dan Mathews.

In an interview with VH1, Pink said “This poor elephant…a huge elephant, it’s so cute, and I could see how painful it was for it to get down on its hands and knees, and I’m like, ‘Can we not do this anymore? I think we got the take, you know, it’s enough. The elephant has had enough.’ And the trainer’s like, ‘Oh, he loves it.’ And so I was like, ‘So when were you an elephant?’… I didn’t like it. I won’t do that again. … No more animals.” When talking about the different style of video, Pink said “This one’s very dark and artsy, and I have black hair, which is very fun. I loved it. It’s another part that I haven’t concentrated on before.”

The censored version of the song/video changes “Can’t stay on your morphine, it’s making me itch” to “Can’t stay on your life support, it’s making me itch”, and changes “bitch” to “witch”. Pink’s mouth is only blurred once in the censored version as she says “bitch” at about 2 minutes 45 seconds in the video.

Wikipedia

The song is almost always included in setlists of performances and tours.

Other performances…