Pink has made a career of soundtracking a generation’s growing pains. In the video for her 2001 breakthrough single Don’t Let Me Get Me, she was the pink-haired, tattooed misfit in the high-school changing rooms, positioned in opposition to Britney Spears. In all of her releases, through to 2017’s heart-wrenching Beautiful Trauma, she’s made it her trademark to make anthemic pop songs about subjects – such as divorce, depression, or drugs – that don’t necessarily lend themselves to an uplifting chorus.
Hurts 2B Human treads familiar ground. With the brass-assisted, stomping opening track Hustle, and the EDM juggernaut Can We Pretend, the listener is provided with the underdog me-against-the-world anthems that Pink does so well. But the album’s most affecting points are its most tender. Lead single Walk Me Home and the pared-back 90 Days both carry flourishes of digitised vocal production, a fresh touch in a catalogue of pop-rock. Plus, any ballad that allows Pink to showcase her vocals is a stand-out moment: on the title track, with Khalid, she’s strikingly raspy and heartfelt, and on the album’s melancholic closing track The Last Song of Your Life, she soars beautifully into her upper range.
On The Last Song, and the impassioned Circle Game, Pink confronts love and loss, and reflects on what it means to grow up and become the parental figure she used to look up to. Paradoxically, while these songs dwell on the theme of growth, they don’t show much of it. Hurts 2B Human is a decent entry into the Pink canon, but can’t help but exist slightly in the shadow of the recent release of Homecoming by her peer Beyoncé – a reminder of the blood, sweat and tears it takes to truly remain innovative over two decades. There’s beauty in consistency, but not the same sense of constant evolution. The Pink who sings of not wanting to become a grownup feels like the same Pink we met yelling at the mirror and kicking out at archetypes, all the way back in 2001.
