Our final song to reach #1 by two different artists is also the one with the longest span between releases — 27 years.
‘Lady Marmalade’ first reached the top spot in 1974, recorded by the girl group Labelle (Patti Labelle sang the lead vocal). Patti later claimed to not know the French-language refrain (“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”) meant “Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”
My final 2003 album wasn’t a major commercial success, or musically groundbreaking. It’s just the third studio album by an artist I really like but don’t feature very often: Pink.
Try This was Pink’s follow-up to the smash 2001 hit Missundaztood, which went 5X Platinum and remains her best-selling album, with 12 million copies moved worldwide. That album marked a shift from pop to rock, and Try This continued the evolution of her sound.
I started listening to Pink sometime in the late 2000s, when her latest album Funhouse was charting well and receiving a lot of critical acclaim.
I also enjoyed her next album, 2012’s The Truth About Love, but after that I stopped keeping up with her releases. She has dropped two studio albums since then that struggled to find an audience. Last year’s Hurts 2B Human hasn’t even cracked 100,000 U.S. sales, while most of her earlier releases were in the millions.
Rounding out my latest installment of ‘What the Kids are Listening To These Days’ is Pink, who sits at Billboard’s #10 with ‘Just Like Fire.’ The track is featured in the new Alice in Wonderland movie, Through the Looking Glass.
I like Pink a lot and this is a perfectly fine song, though for my money the best song by a pop singer featured in a 2016 family movie is still ‘Try Everything’ by Shakira, as heard in the delightful Zootopia.
This past week I dedicated a lot of time to the crop of pop divas who dominate the charts. But I’d trade every one of them for Pink, who doesn’t sell as many records but produces much more resonant music.
I’ve been meaning to buy (do I have to say “download” these days?) Pink’s early albums because I’m a huge fan of her most recent releases, Funhouse and The Truth About Love. Usually when I latch on to somebody’s new material I start digging back into their earlier work but I haven’t gotten around to that with Pink. Gotta do that.
Meet Me In Montauk 