Pink in Melbourne: the secret to her show’s success
BY the end of August, Pink will have played Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena more times than any other artist. Here’s why she’s still reeling in the crowds.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IN a touring world increasingly fixated on bigger venues, Pink continues to concentrate on being the best at what she does.
Basing herself and her family in Australia for two months means Pink can still play arenas, not stadiums.
That speaks volumes about how she treats her audience and views the live experience.
MORE: PINK GETS AROUND ON MOTORBIKE TO EXPLORE FRANKSTON
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM PINK’S BEAUTIFUL TRAUMA 2018 TOUR
Pink’s Beautiful Trauma tour actually manages to shoehorn a stadium-sized production into Rod Laver Arena. The staging and hi-tech screen is on a mammoth scale.
Yet she still manages to make the 13,500 seat venue (which she’ll play a remarkable 11 times on this tour) seem intimate.
Whether that be by her trademark flying over the crowd or by stripping things back to her equally trademark campfire acoustic moment, there’s a reason why Pink will have played Rod Laver Arena 53 times (more than any other artist) come the end of August.
You can’t fake what she does. Quite literally, in the case of her aerial work, which involves months of training. And then factor in she’s still singing completely live even when hanging upside down or zipping up to the nosebleeds like a leather-clad bat out of hell.
But it’s that genuine connection that continues to explain why she’s sold 150,000 tickets for these latest Melbourne shows alone.
She’s the square peg outsider who’s made it on her own terms and these are her people. And there’s more and more joining the tribe (and showering Pink in gifts and love) — possibly in tandem with pop music getting more beige and singers playing it more safe.
This tour is essentially a greatest hits set — Get the Party Started, Just Like a Pill, Who Knew, Try, Perfect, Raise Your Glass, So What, Just Give Me a Reason, Just Like Fire — with the highlights from last year’s album Beautiful Trauma.
What About Us is a spine-tingling moment — a battle cry for a divided world — and she finds the best ever solution to an absent duet partner — a giant inflatable Eminem on the lyrically-questionable Revenge.
And who else could channel her grunge youth with a Nirvana cover then immediately perform a stunning bite-size Cirque Du Soleil aerial ballet show during Secrets?
The back-to-basics rock assault on Smells Like Teen Spirit reminds you Pink doesn’t need all the Instagram-ready gravity-defying acrobatics and precision choreography. But the fact she can do it all effortlessly in the one show reinforces just how one of a kind Pink is.
Pink plays Rod Laver Arena again tonight and then Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and returns on to Melbourne on August 28 and 29.
‘I wouldn’t even s*** that’: What you missed on Wentworth
Wentworth does WikiLeaks in the third episode of the new season, as the Foxtel drama welcomes a new face. And there’s drama for Reb and Lou. Warning: Spoilers.
The moment Manu realised he had turned into a ‘d-ck’
TV chef Manu Feildel says the failure of his Melbourne restaurant with George Calombaris caused a horrible downward spiral, and it wasn’t until this horror moment that he realised he desperately needed to turn his life around.