“Just Like a Pill,” by P!nk, Monday, April 15, 2024
Last year, the Hit Parade podcast highlighted one of the most consistent voices in pop music in the previous twenty years. Yet, Alecia Beth Moore, a.k.a. P!nk’s career has been underrated perhaps because it is so M!ssundaztood. First marketed as an R&B act by her record company, P!nk’s debut album, Can’t Take Me Home, introduced the star as racially ambiguous. P!nk’s second album began to bridge the singer into guitar-based rock ballads, which would be the meat of her career. Following the album’s first single, “Get This Party Started,” M!ssundaztood’s second single and second track “Don’t Let Me Get Me” displays Moore’s desire to be a singer on her own terms: a rock-influenced pop star who would sing about what she wanted to.
I CAN’T STAY ON YOUR MORPHINE ‘CAUSE IT’S MAKING ME ITCH. P!nk was signed by Atlanta-based R&B and Hip-Hop label LaFace Records whose president, L.A. Reid tried to market Moore as an R&B/teen-pop crossover act. But rock would become P!nk’s style of choice by her second record with the singles “Don’t Let Me Get Me” and “Just Like a Pill.” However, rock radio never embraced P!nk like it did female pop-rock stars of the ‘90s Alanis Morrissette or Natalie Imbruglia, or ‘00s female-fronted bands like Evanescence or Flyleaf. Instead, P!nk’s venture into rock music seemed to serve the rock-ifying of pop in the ‘00s heard in acts like Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson. P!nk’s second album was her best-selling record. The album’s first three singles were top-ten Billboard Hot 100 hits. And while the R&B- influenced “Get This Party Started” beat the two rock singles “Don’t Let Me Get Me” and “Just Like a Pill,” the rock songs would lay a template for her rock songs that would later top the Billboard chart later in the decade and in the next.
I TRIED TO CALL THE NURSE AGAIN, BUT SHE’S BEIN’ A LITTLE BITCH. “Just Like a Pill” and “Don’t Let Me Get Me” were a counterforce to teen pop. In M!ssundaztood’s second single, P!nk laments “Don’t want to be compared to damn Britney Spears. She’s so pretty; that just ain’t me.” P!nk has explained this lyric as not intended to throw shade on the teen pop singer but rather to state that P!nk viewed herself as an intentionally flawed star and that female singers didn’t have to fit into a Britney Spears mold. Furthermore, P!nk wanted to write songs discussing her life, some of which were never the subject of teen pop. In her fourth hit “Family Portrait,” P!nk talks about abuse and divorce, inspired by her childhood and the end of her parents’ marriage. In today’s song, “Just Like a Pill,” Moore talks about a former toxic relationship she had using the metaphor of the negative side effects of drugs to compare the relationship to. P!nk even talked about her past drug use, and the music video seemed more inspired by Nine Inch Nails than Christina Aguilera's early videos. It was grimier than a pop video at the time and featured P!nk licking her video boyfriend’s stomach. Britney and Christina would make videos similar to “Just Like a Pill,” but at that point, it would be hard to call their music of that era teen pop.
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