In this era of the pop superdiva, Vancouver has been truly blessed over the past twelve months. Madonna, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, even Barbra Streisand have all visited our fair city. Beyoncé is coming in just over a month.
After witnessing Pink at Rogers Arena last night, they should all be ashamed. They’re barely trying.
‘The Truth About Love Tour,’ on this kind of form, is pop divahood beyond theatrics and spectacle. It’s a combination of grand ideas, legitimate talent and jaw-dropping performance that seared itself into the mind of anyone that witnessed it.
In Pictures: Pink wows Vancouver with flashy show, stunning vocals
The entertainment began 20 minutes before Pink even made an appearance. A white-faced clown clumsily barged his way through the arena, licking bald heads and generally making a comedy nuisance of himself. Arriving on stage he introduced himself as Rubix Von Füchenhürtz, the show’s MC, “Your guide, your soothsayer” on our quest to learn “the Truth About Love.” Searching for a fan to experience this journey the cameras panned the crowd, finally falling on a blonde young lady. Hold on. It’s only freakin’ Pink!!!
What seemed like moments later she was centre stage, above centre stage in truth, singing “Raise Your Glass” while joyfully bouncing thirty feet into the air on a set of bungee cords supported by three strapping male dancers, themselves suspended upside down from the rigging.
That set the tone for the physical performance to come. But Pink was displaying an equal knack for the personal touch.
“How many of you consider yourselves to be good dancers?” she asked by way of introducing “Leave Me Alone”.
“You should take a break for this song. Where are my terrible dancers?” she grinned, before busting out some deliberately goofy moves of her own.
She was in the air again, rotating at speed on a rope trapeze, through power ballad “Try.” As circus it was impressive stuff. As a musical performance, it was head-spinning. A faithful cover of “Wicked Game” came straight after, although Chris Isaak never had to sing it while being hoisted beyond the horizontal by three brawny dancers.
After a brief solo from drummer Mark Schulman, Pink cranked out a tasty beat on her own little kit, the springboard for “Are We All We Are,” which rattled along despite Pink losing her place for a brief moment, muttering “What are the words?” with a smile.
“Sober” was the wildest outing yet, Pink raised to the rafters yet again on a spherical metal frame, before being joined in the sky by her dancers and holding on for dear life outside the violently swaying construction with an anxiety-inducing lack of safety harnesses.
Letting heart-rates settle, Pink sat down at a piano, modestly confessed that she was semi-confident of getting through her one keyboard performance of the night, and delivered vocal fireworks in the shape of “The Great Escape.” Having shown her gymnastic strength, Pink’s vocal power was further unveiled with an acoustic “Who Knew” and “Less Than Perfect,” both delivered at the end of a curved runway jutting into the heart of the crowd.
If there was one tiny flaw of the evening, it was that Pink’s rock-goes-pop band were so locked into their stylistic groove, songs began to sound similar after a certain point. This was most evident during a three-hit medley from her distant past that sounded no different to the rest of the set, the star struggling to revisit her R’n’B roots with a straight face.
The (seemingly) grand finale of “Slut Like You” and “Blow Me (One More Kiss)” was an eruption of light and choreography, resolving with our old chum Rubix alone on stage preaching the truth of the journey we’d travelled, “We’ve seen the glory of love and the sphincter of sin!”
With little time to analyse whether this was an encore or not, Pink returned with a harness around her waist, sang the opening lines of “So What” while being hooked up, and then was whooshed skywards, flying around Rogers Arena at eye level with the upper bowl, pirouetting, somersaulting and singing the entire time. It sounds amazing. It was.
In this era of the female pop superstar, Pink’s relatively low gossip-mag profile has made her easy to overlook. Unwilling to sell her soul to afford the price of fame, what the world is left with is a proud mother, a great singer and the most athletically impressive musical performer of perhaps any generation.
And most importantly, unlike Kanye West, she actually shows up at her concerts.
