Album Anniversaries: 20 Years of Making Sense of Stardom with P!nk's 'M!ssundaztood'
In 2001, P!nk released M!ssundaztood, an album imbued with dreams of stardom. It got the party started, and kicked off a successful career that continues to this day.
Written by Tatum McDonald
Photos courtesy of Arista Records
In the year 2000, Alecia Beth Moore released her first studio album, Can’t Take Me Home, under the stage name P!nk. It was met with moderate success and mixed critical reception, and ultimately was not enough to launch her into the cultural zeitgeist, something that was clearly on P!nk’s mind when she released her second album, M!ssundaztood a year later. P!nk was ready to be a star, and this album was going to be her vehicle to the cosmos.
The 15-track album includes two features, one with Scratch, a former member of R&B group the Roots, and one with Linda Perry, the co-writer of a majority of the album’s songs. It also includes collaboration with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame. She released four singles over the course of the album cycle, “Get the Party Started,” “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” “Just Like a Pill,” and “Family Portrait,” all of which charted in the U.S., the UK, and New Zealand. “Family Portrait” performed poorer than the other three, but as it is the album’s most vulnerable track — that is to be expected. “I don’t want love to desert me like it did my family,” is not exactly radio-friendly.
There are two recurring themes throughout the album’s 55-minute runtime: the misinterpretation of P!nk’s previous pieces, and her desire for stardom.
On the album’s opening track she tells her listeners, “It’s not that complicated, I'm just misunderstood.” She sings about her self-destructive tendencies on “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” saying that even she can’t stand herself sometimes. Her toxic family past shows up on “Family Portrait” where she says “Daddy don’t leave … I’ll be so much better, I’ll do everything right.” And in “Dear Diary,” she yearns for someone or something to take all of her dirty secrets in stride, to be understood even if only by an inanimate object. Over and over, she presents the image of someone who is a mess but would be okay if she could just feel understood.
The second theme is the double-edged sword of fame. Despite the impending likelihood of her stardom, P!nk shows a complicated relationship with it. The first time the idea of her potential fame comes up is on “Don’t Let Me Get Me.” She sings, “L.A. told me, 'You’ll be a pop star, all you have to change is everything you are.'” She sees fame as something there for the taking, but knows that it will take something from her in return. While on a later track, “Gone to California,” she sings, “I’m going to California to find a pot of gold” and “there’s a better life for me.” The same place that could destroy her identity and sense of self is also the place of her salvation. Despite these disparities, it is still what she wants. On the Perry-helmed “Lonely Girl” she owns this desire, “I want to be a star,” even in the face of Perry’s questioning, “Do you even know who you are?”
Like most art from the early aughts, it does not age as well as its creators might have hoped.
P!nk positioned herself as the antithesis of the era’s post-Mickey Mouse club pop stars, as something that was more “edgy.” Her infamous feud with Christina Aguilera started the year this album was released (it’s still unclear as to who threw the first punch). Though, aside from a lean towards pop-rock and away from the candy-pop of her peers and a couple of lyrics that have aged very poorly (such as “You can hang me like a slave, I’ll go underground”), there is little about the album that is as groundbreaking or on the cutting edge as was likely intended, or even as her haircut. Then again, all a conventionally attractive white woman needs to be edgy is short hair, anyway.
Poorly aged pieces included, this album did what its creators intended. It peaked at number six on the U.S. Billboard 200 and has since gone platinum in 14 countries. It is the launchpad for the P!nk we know today, the one with eight albums, 17 Grammy nominations, and three wins under her belt. She shot for the stars and made it up there safely and without a total loss of self. M!issundaztood is not the pinnacle of early aughts music, it’s not even P!nk’s best album, but it is a reflection of her in the moments before she shot into stardom, and that’s all it needed to be.