P!nk- Fuckin' Perfect

Popular songs are “popular” not only because they are the top music hits or they have made it on Top 10 on Billboard, it is because those songs are songs are reflections of culture, ideas, beliefs, or personal styles… they convey messages to audiences through singing.

In Pink’s album Greatest Hits…. So Far!!!, she released a single called Fuckin’ Perfect. The video features Tina Majorino, playing a woman that has struggled for identity and finally found herself through painting, and became a successful artist. This single has ignited a lot of controversies because of the title of the song and the graphic depiction of sex, self-abuse, and suicide in her music video. However, knowing that the song might raise a lot of issues in the public, Pink kept the originality of the song and the video because her goal was to convey the message through them. Pink posted on her official website that “Cutting, and suicide, two very different symptoms of the same problem, are gaining on us. (the problem being; alienation and depression. the symptoms; cutting and suicide). I personally don't know a single person who doesn't know at least two of these victims personally.” It was clear that Pink wanted to address those issues openly, and give hope to people who are encountering those road bumps in their lives. Another inspiration for this song might be her yet-to-be-born baby at the time she created this song and the video. Living through thirty-two years of life by 2011, Pink has gone through a lot of dark phases and lived through her life as a celebrity; she wanted her baby daughter to know that there is nothing more important than being her true self, and that as a mother, Pink will accept everything about her baby, because she is ‘fuckin’ perfect’ .

I really like this song as well as Pink’s style of song and lyrics because her messages are always clear and realistic. As an artist, she did not yield to what the publics want; instead she raised issues in her songs that usually people avoid, or wrote lyrics that were straightforward that some people might even find offending. But I think she lives a real life, and she is a true artist because she only writes Pink songs. In this song Fuckin’ Perfect, her first verse started as

Made a wrong turn once or twice
Dug my way out, blood and fire
Bad decisions, that's alright
Welcome to my silly life

I find myself connected to the lyrics because what she is saying happens to everyone in their lives, nobody’s life is perfect, that is why we fail and we learn from our lessons to become better people. In the fourth and fifth verses of the song, she wrote

You're so mean when you talk
About yourself. You were wrong.
Change the voices in your head
Make them like you instead.

So complicated,
Look happy, You'll make it!
Filled with so much hatred
Such a tired game
It's enough, I've done all I could think of
Chased down all my demons
I've seen you do the same

After hearing those two verses, I find her lyrics reflecting on some common issues in the society, especially women in this new generation. With media flourishing in this society, women’s images are symbolized as being skinny, having long legs, large breasts and hips… more and more people are developing anorexia at their teenage phase; more and more people are throwing money into the plastic surgery industry; more and more people are going to doctors for depression or anxiety… The American research group Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc. says that one out of every four college-aged women uses unhealthy methods of weight control such as fasting, skipping meals, excessive exercise, or self-induced vomiting. The fact is, media images of female beauty that we see in our daily lives are unattainable for everyone except for a small proportion of women.  A lot of images we see are computer generated, or modified by Photoshop. In the music video, the main girl also tried to change herself in order to look like the other girls, she tried using drugs, stealing clothes, losing weight…and at the end, nothing can make her perfect, she fell apart in the bathtub and cut herself. The video might seem shocking, but this is not purely fictional, it comes from our daily lives, there are a lot of people that are constantly struggling to become someone else, trying things that they shouldn’t have tried, and abusing themselves to feel better.

In her song she also wrote

The whole world's scared, so I swallow the fear
The only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer
So cool in line and we try try try but we try too hard
And it's a waste of my time.

Done looking for the critics, cause they're everywhere
They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair
Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time
Why do we do that, why do I do that (why do I do that)?

I think this also relate to herself since she has a very unique image as a singer, the Rock style, short hair, tattoos, piercings, as well as her style of songs and singing. But she has come so far and learned who she is and who she wants to be, so she did not try to do what people are used to hear or see. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone commented her saying that: "I think people respond to her sense of independence and dedication. It inspires people ... This is a prolific pop artist who is sometimes famous and successful, sometimes obscure, who nonetheless keeps making her own kind of music. Every few years, the spotlight comes back around to her—but her fans can trust that when the spotlight moves along, Pink will keep on writing Pink songs."