Without a doubt, all of the depression- and suicide-related songs released in recent memory have meant well.
Unfortunately, the singer-as-motivational-speaker thing is a but impulsive and contrived. Has been for some time, too: The late-'80s film Heathers even lampooned the trope with a hokey anti-suicide track called "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)."
So leave it to Pink to pay no mind and directly confront depression and suicide in song form.
Some credit where it's due: Whereas most other artists just dance around the subject matter -- and sometimes with dancefloor
tracks, at that -- Pink just cuts right through the euphemisms and faces the topic
candidly. And in the case of her music video for the song "Fuckin' Perfect," she does so graphically, too.
For sure, Pink's got bigger balls than the rest of them.
But that doesn't mean this ballad is "Fuckin' Perfect." For starters, it sounds fairley samey, using those same four chords we've all heard
before. Really, this sounds like something Pink could have written and
released 10 years ago.
Lyrically, it doesn't get much better. She even brings out the "mis-" prefix and puns ("Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood/Miss 'No way, it's all good'") she employed in her decade-old album, Missundaztood. But that's just what Pink does, penning songs full of cliches. The alliterative ("Pretty, pretty please") line that starts the chorus follows this tradition. It's nothing
too groundbreaking.
And, for all her boldness, Pink's track makes the
same mistake the other motivational tracks do: It gives off a mixed
message. Let's not forget, Pink was a rapper once upon a time. And there's just something wrong about artists who have changed their
identities in the process of making it big telling their fans that they're fine just the way they are.
Me? I say screw that! I say take a page from these artists: Make a new identity for yourself.
No, really: If you find a group of like-minded
people, role-playing can be awesome. Personally, my experience has been more of the "dice and games" than "whips and chains" variety. But, hey, both sound pretty exciting.
Of
course, if you do decide to play a character, leave at least some space for reality.
Otherwise, you might start to think that everything really is "Fucking Perfect." And then people will mostly just hate you for being that happy all the time.