Understanding Lyrical Links - Pink

Pink is an incredibly talented pop artist who sings with passion in every one of her songs. All of her songs seem to involve anger as the main emotion portrayed within the lyrics and the videos. She is still a very good singer and co-writes her own songs allowing her to use how she feels in her music.

All her music is also quite upbeat and has a good tempo to it, meaning that her angry lyrics seem more passionate as she is almost telling her audience off by having such a fast pace to her music.

She has been around since 2000 and still people want to listen to her music and watch her videos. This is because she is passionate about her music and she sings about things that much of her audience can relate to. Also the music is described by her as 'pop rock' meaning that she seems to want to upset the genre a bit and not be like a normal pop artist, she wants to be unique and different.

Our expectations for a pop video is that it will be fairly high-budget and have clean-cut ,neat and expensive costumes as well as a story that generally involves the main artist playing a part in the story and the narrative of the video. The music videos for this genre tend to be quite 'feel good' and colourful to make the audience happy and because the pop genre is generally just based around solo artists, there is not very often much performance-based videos, they're usually completely based around a storyline told by the lyrics.

Pink has combined the 'feel good' feeling of the pop genre with the angry and fast-paced conventions of a rock video to effectively create a 'new style'.

Analysis of props compared with the lyrics:

This screenshot (left) shows Pink sitting on the sidelines at a volleyball game where she is part of the team. She is wearing a shirt that says the name of the team she is supposed to be playing for. At this point the lyrics say that she doesn't support the team, illustrating the lyrics and the costume in this is helpful to show to the audience that she is part of a team but her body language, attititude and the lyrics tell the audience that she doesn't want to be part of the team.







This screenshot (right) highlights what is being said in the lyrics 'My socks are never clean' and this use of props is clever as it illustrates the lyrics as well as shows her as being a bit strange and self-conscious about who she is, perfectly catching the emotions of the teenage girl audience that she is aiming this video at.







The lyrics at this point in the video say 'Every day I fight a war against the mirror', and the use of the mirror in this short scene (left) shows that she doesn't like the way she is and is portraying how Pink doesn't like looking in the mirror because of her self-consciousness and lack of belief in who she is and what she looks like.




 


This image (right) shows an intertextual link to a man called LA Reid, which links in with the lyrics as at this point, the words talk about how LA told Pink that she wouldn't make it in the music industry unless she changes everything about herself. He is a music producer so therefore she is basically linking this to the idea that people shouldn't let themselves be told what they can and cannot do in life by people, just because they have more authority.




This screenshot (left) doesn't particularly have a certain lyric that matches it, but it refers to the idea of self-harming which happens amongst the typical audience members that she is aiming this particular video. During this short scene she stabs the knife into a door to link to the idea that there is no need to self-harm because it's better to just get rid of the knife and move on with your life. This points out to the teenage girls, who this video is clearly aimed at, that they do not have to self-harm to one day be big or famous like Pink is.