You can’t please all the people all the time, but P!nk’s seventh gives it her best shot. This, naturally, includes roping in Eminem – again – for a strangely jovial, sometimes filthy-mouthed tale of cheating on Revenge, and the song’s patchwork nature is indicative of the album as a whole.
“Beautiful Trauma feels like it’s the contrived result of market research, with little more than P!nk’s hurricane force voice as its unifying quality.” – Wyndham Wallace
If you want to raise the roof, try the anthemic title track, the galumphing Where We Go, or maybe What About Us?, which sidesteps potential accusations of self-pity by leaving its meaning vague enough to encapsulate any unsatisfying situation.
Barbies gratifies the need for a big budget power ballad, Secrets provides the token EDM excursion, Better Life offers slinky but hardly memorable R&B, and there’s even a busy gospel number, I Am Here, to secure the Christian vote. She concludes with two vocal showcases, Wild Hearts, contributing the obligatory ‘girl power’ moment – “There’s not enough tape to shut this mouth” – and You Get My Love the ‘damn, the girl can sing!’ one.
Unfortunately, it’s all as credible as her claim on But We Lost It that “the bone breaks/ It grows back stronger”. Any doctor will tell you that’s fake news, traumatic or not.
Classic Pop may earn commission from the links on this page, but we only feature products we think you will enjoy.
