PHOENIX, Arizona — At the kickoff of her debut headlining tour, Pink was concerned about pleasing a certain segment of her audience.
"You guys are fun," she told the capacity crowd of about 2,000. "My dad and my stepmom are in the audience. I'm on my best behavior. I hope I haven't sworn that much, have I?"
Pink, who launched her tour Thursday at the Web Theatre, offered an energetic opening to her set with the apropos "Get the Party Started," the first single from her album Missundaztood. Wearing an orange jumpsuit with a turquoise tank top peeking out, the platinum-haired Pink jumped to the beat. Glow-in-the-dark patches adorned the outfit, one of a handful she wore.
During her 75-minute performance, Pink proved her vocal prowess, which was buried beneath over-produced teen pop/R&B on her 2000 debut, Can't Take Me Home. She wrapped her smoky voice around an emotional rendition of 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up," an obvious nod to Linda Perry, the former group's frontwoman who produced and co-wrote material for Missundaztood.
Ten years ago when this song came out was when I fell in love," Pink said.
She referenced Perry several times during the performance.
"When I was gonna do this new record, I decided to go after one of my idols. [The record company] told me I couldn't, so I did it," Pink said as the audience laughed.
"[Linda] thinks I have problems. I don't think I do. She wrote this for me and let me sing it. It's very special to me," she added about the track "Lonely Girl."
Behind the band, a curtain ran the length of the stage, making it look as if the album title Missundaztood was spray-painted along a white brick wall. At times, it was pulled aside and replaced with a video screen. Using slide shows, Pink paid homage to Janis Joplin, her divorced parents and Vietnam veterans during her set.
Pink poked fun at the various ways she has been "Missundaztood." A female dancer joined her for a sexually suggestive number meant to acknowledge the rumors that she is a lesbian. (She is reportedly dating male extreme sports star Carey Hart.)
She was playful, holding the microphone over the crowd to let them sing the chorus of "There You Go," one of the few tunes from Can't Take Me Home she played.
The playfulness segued to visual irritation when a fan threw a tampon on stage as a gift.
"I think I make enough money to buy my own tampons, thanks," she said.
Pink's father and mother's divorce weighs heavily on her latest album, and that was reflected live as well. "Family Portrait" was accompanied by a slide show of her family.
"This song goes out to all the mommies and daddies who broke up. You made our lives that much easier," she said facetiously about "Family Portrait."
At the end of "My Vietnam," Pink was joined near the front of the stage by four of her five bandmates, who locked arms and faced the video screen as her guitarist played a Jimi Hendrix-esque version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Near the middle of the show, Pink mentioned that she had seen a few problems with her performance.
"Since this is the first show, you get to see all the screw-ups. You should feel honored," said Pink, who ended her show with "Don't Let Me Get Me."
There were no obvious "screw-ups," however. Just evidence of a burgeoning star.
The New York glam rock quartet Candyass opened the show to a surprisingly rousing response from the audience, which ranged from female same-sex couples to parents with their kindergartners. The pink heads of girls who dyed their hair speckled the crowd.
"We drove a long way to play for you so you better make some noise," said Candyass' lead singer, who shook her shoulders toward the crowd practically non-stop during the 35-minute set.
For more sights and stories from concerts around the country, check out MTV News Tour Reports.
Before she issues her next studio album, ever-busy singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco tells Billboard.com she will unveil a two-hour movie about her life -- on and off the road over the past five years -- and a live album via her Righteous Babe Records label. Shot largely by DiFranco friend Hilary Goldberg, "Render: Spanning Time With Ani DiFranco" is due June 11 on VHS/DVD and features performances of the previously unreleased songs "In the Way" and "Slide."
Featuring cameos by Hammell On Trial, as well as Righteous Babe artists Utah Phillips and the duo Bitch & Animal, "Render" shows the singer on the road, in the studio, and at home in Buffalo, N.Y. Coinciding with several of her songs, the film also touches on urban decay, racism, sexuality, and the death penalty. It includes performances of such songs as "Fire Door," "Subdivision," "'Tis of Thee," and "Two Little Girls."
Slated for a fall release is DiFranco's second live album, "So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter," which will include a version of "Self Evident," a riveting poem about the events of Sept. 11. The artist's prior live set, 1997's "Living in Clip," debuted at No. 59 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 378,000 copies in the U.S. to date, according to SoundScan.
Though she had performed the poem -- a detailed recounting of what it was like to be in New York that day -- on previous stops on her recent tour, DiFranco says doing "Self Evident" recently in front of an audience at New York's Carnegie Hall proved both terrifying and, ultimately, cathartic.
"I launched into it, luckily for me, before the panic really set in," DiFranco says of the performance. " I started flapping my lips and then I thought, 'What the f*** am I doing?' Ya know? I mean, who knows what these people in this room lost, who they lost, how [9/11] impacted their personal lives. Like, ya know, 'I'm dumping something pretty big on people unsuspecting in this audience right now, and just summoning all of our collective emotion around it -- which in New York can be pretty heavy. I remember standing there onstage and hearing somebody sobbing from the second upper balcony.
"I was just panicking the whole way through," she continues. "I felt so compelled to speak to it, but, ya know, you're always questioning, 'What do I have a right to?' or 'What am I asking of my audience right now?' It was really heavy for me. I was crying, and they were crying, we we're all crying. And it was beautiful at the end."
DiFranco says the song was still unfinished until that very performance. "I was in New York on the 11th," she relates. "There was a lot to process, a lot to think about, a lot to write down, and grapple through. It was called 'Work in Progress' until that show. When I went back and performed that poem before a house full of witnesses and bore witness before them and amongst them, I felt like it was done. I had worked on it for months, just kind of tweaking it and changing it, adding to it. The question just became when to stop, ya know? There's just so much to say."
The song has ended up being "six or seven"-minutes long, DiFranco says, adding that "In the Way" and "Slide" will show up on her next, as-yet-untitled studio album, the follow-up to last year's two-disc set, "Revelling/Reckoning."
NEW YORK (AP) - MTV has rescheduled its Video Music Awards out of respect for the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The ceremony, which usually takes place the first Thursday in September, has been moved up a week to Aug. 29.
"By bringing together artists, fans and the city's creative community for MTV's biggest night of the year, we hope to show our love and support for the place we truly call home every day," the cable network's president, Van Toffler, said in a statement Wednesday.
For the fourth straight year, the Video Music Awards will take place in New York, this time at Radio City Music Hall. The show aired live from the Metropolitan Opera (news - web sites) House last year.
LONDON (Reuters) - Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue has split from her British male model boyfriend James Gooding and the two said on Thursday they had "decided to concentrate on their friendship."
The pair, who had been together for two and a half years, blamed the break-up on their hectic work schedules which made it difficult to maintain a relationship.
But a statement put out by Minogue's spokesman stressed: "They still love each other and it is an entirely amicable split."
And the statement sought to quell a string of tabloid rumors about Minogue's love life.
"Contrary to media reports there is and never has been any truth to marriage, pregnancy or infidelity stories. Therefore they play no part in this decision," it added.
The 33-year-old singer, currently on a sellout British concert tour, said: "This has been a very difficult and emotional decision to make, but we feel that it is appropriate at this time."
The pocket-size pop princess is currently riding high -- she has conquered the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and been garlanded with awards after her remarkable chart renaissance.
Minogue has done the double with her single "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" reaching the U.S. Top Ten while the album "Fever" has reached Number Three. "Can't Get You Out of My Head" has sold more than one million copies in Britain alone.
The star's live show has won acclaim with critics saying she had now taken over Madonna (news - web sites)'s pop throne.
The former soap star from "Neighbors" had a string of hits in the 1980s and early 1990s but her career then slumped. Now she is a hot ticket once more in the notoriously fickle music industry and this year landed two prestigious Brit Awards.
The tabloids are obsessed by Minogue, whose past boy friends have ranged from fellow soap star Jason Donovan to the late INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence.
And she consistently makes the front pages because of her skimpy corset-style outfits that show off her finest attribute.
But she has forcefully denied reports that she had plastic surgery to improve her perfectly crafted posterior.
"I really don't do anything to my backside," she told The Sun. "I have been getting a lot of grief about my posterior. It appears to have become a national obsession but I think the fuss is ridiculous."
NEW YORK (AP) - She didn't win the Academy Award for "Moulin Rouge," but Nicole Kidman won a spot on the cover of People magazine's "The 50 Most Beautiful People" special issue.
Julia Roberts makes the 13th annual list for a record seventh time, and Halle Berry appears for the sixth time.
"You know, I could think of a lot worse things to be labeled," said Berry, who won the best-actress Oscar this year for "Monster's Ball."
Other familiar faces on the list include Cindy Crawford and Denzel Washington. Pop singers Britney Spears and Mandy Moore are both there.
From television, there's Sharon Osbourne, who's gained fame as Ozzy's wife on MTV's "The Osbournes," and Jeff Corwin, host of Animal Planet's "The Jeff Corwin Experience."
And a few athletes made the cut, including Tom Brady, quarterback of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, and Olympic gold medal-winning bobsledder Vonetta Flowers.
"The 50 Most Beautiful People" issue hits newsstands Friday.
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Pink is sick of business managers, lawyers and talking to radio disc jockeys, and you definitely won't find her singing about chocolate.
The themes of her current album, "M!ssundaztood," find Pink fighting against bad relationships in her strident, sorely independent ways.
"To me, it was all about freedom," she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal of her music. "Life is not always flowers and chocolates, and I figured people could relate to that."
She's happy, she says, although she's sick of the politics of music.
Pink, 22, broke onto radio and MTV in 2000 with the hit "There You Go." In 2001, she was one of four singers teaming up for the hit remake of "Lady Marmalade." And in the past few months, she raced up the pop charts with the single "Get the Party Started."
Now, she is on her first headlining tour, arriving Sunday at the Palms in Las Vegas. She will tour with rocker Lenny Kravitz later in the year, a gig she convinced Kravitz should be hers.
"A couple of months ago, I heard he was going on tour," she said. "So I called him. I said, `You should come down to my rehearsal.' He's, like, `Why? What are you rehearsing for?' I said, `Your tour.' "
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