Alecia Beth Moore Hart (born September 8, 1979), known professionally as Pink (stylized as P!nk), is an American singer, songwriter and actress.
During her teens, Pink was a member of the girl group Choice. Her first solo studio album, Can't Take Me Home (2000), was certified double-platinum in the United States. The R&B-influenced album spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs: "There You Go" and "Most Girls". Pink gained further recognition with the collaborative single "Lady Marmalade" from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, which topped many charts worldwide. Pink refocused her sound to pop rock with her second studio album, Missundaztood (2001). The album sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and yielded the international hit songs "Get the Party Started", "Don't Let Me Get Me", and "Just Like a Pill".
Pink's third studio album, Try This (2003), sold significantly less than her second studio album, but earned her the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She returned to the top of the charts with her fourth and fifth studio albums, I'm Not Dead (2006) and Funhouse (2008), which spawned the top-ten entries "Who Knew" and "U + Ur Hand" as well as the number-one single "So What". Pink's sixth studio album, The Truth About Love (2012), was her first Billboard 200 number-one album and spawned her fourth US number-one single, "Just Give Me a Reason". In 2014, Pink recorded a collaborative album, Rose Ave., with Canadian musician Dallas Green as the folk music duo You+Me. Her next studio albums, Beautiful Trauma (2017) and Hurts 2B Human (2019), both debuted at atop the Billboard 200 chart, with the former becoming the world's third best-selling album of the year. Her ninth and most recent studio album, Trustfall (2023), peaked at number 2 in the U.S.
Pink has been described as "pop royalty" for her distinctive raspy voice and acrobatic stage presence. She has sold over 135 million records worldwide (60 million albums and 75 million singles), making her one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her accolades include three Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award and seven MTV Video Music Awards (including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award). In 2009, Billboard named Pink the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade. Pink was also the second-most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom during the 2000s decade, behind only Madonna. VH1 ranked her 10th on its list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music, while Billboard gave her the Woman of the Year award in 2013. At the 63rd annual BMI Pop Awards, she received the BMI President's Award for "her outstanding achievement in songwriting and global impact on pop culture and the entertainment industry."
Early life and family
Alecia Beth Moore was born on September 8, 1979, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to emergency room nurse Judith Moore (née Kugel) and insurance salesman James Moore. She has described herself as an "Irish-German-Lithuanian-Jew", and identifies as Jewish (her mother is Jewish). Although a healthy baby, she developed asthma that plagued her through her early years. When Pink was a toddler, her parents began having marital problems; they divorced before she was 10.
Pink was trained as a competitive gymnast between the ages 4 and 12. She attended Central Bucks High School West. In high school, Pink joined her first band, Middleground, but it disbanded upon losing a Battle of the Bands competition. As a teenager, she wrote lyrics as an outlet for her feelings, and her mother commented, "Her initial writings were always very introspective. Some of it was very black, and very deep, almost worrisome."
Pink began performing in Philadelphia clubs when she was about 14 years old. She adopted her nickname "Pink" as her stage name around this time. She has given different explanations about how she came to be given that nickname, which she has had since she was a child. At 14, she was convinced to audition to become a member of the all-female group Basic Instinct, and earned a spot in the lineup. Ultimately, the group disbanded without releasing any material.