P!nk
Alecia Beth Moore came up through the Philadelphia club and R&B scene as a teenager, debuting in 2000 with the R&B-leaning 'Can't Take Me Home' before reinventing herself on 2001's 'Missundaztood' as a brash, confessional pop-rock provocateur. Across two decades of hits — 'Get the Party Started,' 'So What,' 'Just Give Me a Reason' — she paired a husky, powerhouse voice with acrobatic aerial stage shows to become one of the defining pop stars of the 2000s and 2010s. Her music fuses dance-pop gloss, rock grit, and open-hearted vulnerability.
Pink has repeatedly named Madonna as a defining influence, saying in interviews that as a child she imagined she was Madonna's daughter; she inherited Madonna's model of the female pop star as a self-directed, provocative shape-shifter who moves between dance-floor bangers and confrontation.
listen forPlay Madonna's assertive, groove-driven 'Express Yourself' right before Pink's 'Get the Party Started' — both ride a strutting, self-possessed dance-pop beat with a woman calling the shots and daring the room to keep up.
Pink has cited Janis Joplin as one of her greatest influences, praising how Joplin 'wore her heart on her sleeve' and sang the blues with fearless emotional nakedness; you hear that debt in Pink's turn toward raw-throated rock catharsis on her later ballads.
listen forCue Joplin's ragged, gut-punch delivery on 'Piece of My Heart,' then Pink's 'Sober' — listen for the way both let the voice crack and strain at the top of the chorus, trading polish for exposed, bruised feeling.
Pink launched as an R&B act steeped in the sound of late-'90s groups like TLC, and her debut single carried the same sleek, attitude-forward production and no-nonsense kiss-offs to unworthy men.
listen forSet TLC's finger-wagging 'No Scrubs' beside Pink's debut 'There You Go' — both pair a cool, mid-tempo R&B groove with a female narrator coolly dismissing a man who has had his chance.