Updated 2024-07-26 07.32 | Published 2024-07-25 23.42
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full screen Pink at Strawberry Arena. Photo: Nils Petter Nilsson
CONCERT Pink dazzles their audience with jaw-dropping trapeze acts, aerial tours of the arena and some surprisingly timeless ’00s party minders.
But as so often with these kinds of “larger than life” shows, it’s easy to have a few spectacles too many. It’s the ballads that come home.
Pink
Place: Strawberry Arena, Stockholm. Public: 45 005. Length: Two hours. Best: ”Make you feel my love” och ”I am here”. Worst: Terrible riff rock exercises in “Just like fire” and “Heartbreaker”.
In the wave of teen stars that largely defined commercial pop at the dawn of the 00s was Pinkor Alecia Moore as it says on her driver’s license, pioneering to the extent that she managed to break away from her producers’ and managers’ ideas of how she should look and sound and go her own way, away from friend r’n’b-pop towards a still hit-oriented but rockier and more personal outsider-leaning pop, with a clear positive message characterized by “female empowerment” and the equal value of all people.
She thus paved the way and formed a school for future superstars such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.
The musical expression is still pretty much rooted in the 00s and a quick inspection of the crowd at the Strawberry Arena makes it clear that the majority of those who listen to Pink today started doing so as teenagers twenty years ago.
Thus, it would be easy to slowly begin to slip the 44-year-old star into the legacy section, the artists who primarily go around playing increasingly older hits for increasingly older fans, but anyone who examines the numbers notes that last year’s album “Trustfall” was yet another formidable success. The “Summer carnival” tour, which Solna is visiting this beautiful evening, started already last summer and will only end in November.
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fullscreen chevron-rightnextPink at Strawberry Arena.
1 / 2Photo: Nils Petter Nilsson
And there’s certainly nothing comfortable or laid back about this show. Rather, Pink seems more than keen to make her eighth world tour her most spectacular yet.
We therefore not only get power choruses from almost 25 years of hits, but also a brightly colored attack on the optic nerve. Countless changes of clothes, flamethrowers, confetti and seven dancers who both dress up as giant red mouths and ride around on electrically powered pink flamingos. With more.
And, of course, Pink’s specialty: a lot of breakneck acrobatics.
Everything starts, as so often, with the old signature tune “Get the party started”. Pink appears in a big mouth across the stage, throws herself into a kind of bungee jump, jumps back up, spins several times in the air and is caught by two dancers, all the while sniping Eurythmics “Sweet dreams” and C+C Music Factorys “Gonna make you sweat” spices up the song and inflated cartoon unicorns and skulls frame the scene
It’s not a weak entry.
The singer then blasts on with almost two hours of pop rock, rock pop, dance pop and power ballads.
The choruses in “Just like a pill” and “Blow me (one last kiss)” undoubtedly still crackle. An acoustic, country gospel-tinged “I am here”, with a mini version of the band out on the tongue in the audience, lifts the hall several meters.
Others, like “Fuckin’ perfect”, are quite dated radio rock with rap. The dance pop in last year’s song “Trustfall” as well. When she tries to make some kind of heavy riffing hard rock out of the part with “Just like fire” and Pat Benatar “Heartbreaker” turns out to be quite horrible.
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fullscreen chevron-rightnextPink at Strawberry Arena.
1 / 2Photo: Nils Petter Nilsson
On the other hand, Pink is both touching and fun when she takes a lot of time with her fans, offers them sweets, signs Converse shoes and tells about how she went to Systembolaget when she was in Stockholm during a dark period and wrote “Please don’t leave me”.
And even if the purely artistic connection to the song “Turbulence” is possibly unclear, it is impossible not to be impressed by how she manages to do the right breathtaking trapeze gymnastics and sing at the same time. Even more so when, in the confetti-filled boogie finale “So what”, suspended from wires, she flies around basically the entire arena and says goodbye to the audience.
However, as so often in this kind of megashow, it is when Pink cleans away all the effects and scales down that she reminds us of the singer she really is able to be.
“Just give me a reason”, a power ballad about trying to mend broken love together with pre-recorded ones Fun– the singer Nate Ruess on the screens, is such a moment. Bob Dylan’s “Make you feel my love”, here in a version closer to the Pink admirer Adele interpretation, another. She also finds it in “When I get there”, a rather nice song from last year for her late father.
Of course, people have largely come for the spectacle, but for me Pink would have liked to scale back even more. Preferably at the expense of that hard-to-square rock rock.
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FACT
All the songs
Akt 1: 1. Get the party started 2. Raise your glass 3. Who knew 4. Just like a pill 5. What about us Akt 2: 6. Turbulence 7. Make you feel my love (Bob Dylan-cover) 8. Just give me a reason 9. Fuckin’ perfect 10. Just like fire/Heartbreaker Akt 3: 11. Please don’t leave me 12. Don’t let me get me 13. When I get there 14. I am here 15. What’s up? (4 Non Blondes-cover) Akt 4: 16. Try 17. Trustfall 18. Blow me (one last kiss) 19. Never gonna not dance again Encore: 20. So what
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