P!nk at the Bell Center | Pink magic

Just because a show takes place in the biggest venue in town doesn’t mean it’s necessarily spectacular. We have seen many rock groups simply tapping their feet on the Bell Center stage. P!nk pulled out all the stops on Wednesday during the first of her two shows in Montreal: she defied pop molds and gravity to wow the crowd.

We can’t reduce P!nk to just one thing. She has the abilities of a vocal singer, but the look of a punkette princess. She has a sense of spectacle, humor and speaks to a crowd of 16,000 people as if she were in her living room. Not to mention that this singer with the soul of a rocker is also a good dancer and even acrobat.

P!nk began his show by jumping from the top of the stage structure erected on the ice of the Bell Center after an animated introduction inspired by the character Max Headroom (ask Google who that is, if you are under 40 years old ). She twirled above the stage, even singing upside down in one of those aerial numbers that are her trademark.

She of course kicked off the evening with Get the Party Startedsuccess of 2001, then followed with Raise Your Glass (which many spectators did) and Just Like A Pill. The sound was not yet ready at that time (too much reverberation, poor balance between high and low frequencies), but on stage, the singer, her backing vocalists (most often three, sometimes four) and her half- A dozen dancers gave their all.

It was more than just to impress: we immediately felt a generosity in P!nk and his entourage. A frank joy, a desire to please, to make people forget the heavy things in life. “Are we going to let loose for two hours?” », Launched the singer, who received enthusiastic shouts from all over the Bell Center in response.

Serial reinventions

Taylors Swift highlights in documentary Miss Americana that women reinvent themselves a thousand times more than men in pop and rock. By obligation, first, and by choice then. She’s right. P!nk is the perfect illustration of this: his show was like his career, that is to say multifaceted.

After an introduction to pop, or even europop in the case of What About Us, which enchanted the audience, she donned a dress from the air and emphasized her “vocal singer” side. Alone at the piano, she did Make You Feel My Lovea song by Bob Dylan also covered by Adele, then accompanied by her pianist, she delivered a sensitive interpretation of his song Lost Cause.

A little later, she took off the dress and found her rock energy, among other things, for F**kin’Perfect And Just Like Fire, song in which she integrated a piece of Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar. A wink as much as a tribute since the rocker, now 70 years old, is one of those women who sought to do things their own way from the turn of the 1980s, thus opening a door in which P! nk was able to rush in 20 years later.

The reinventions continued in the second part of the show during which the American star sang with her young daughter (Cover Me in Sunshine) and versed in folk (When I Get There, in memory of his father). She also covered — while trying to stay serious, she said — an old song of hers called Please Don’t Leave Mewhose words contrast with the image of an independent woman that she has built for two decades.

The final bouquet was as danceable as the beginning and it was from the air that P!nk greeted his fans by singing So What, circling the Bell Center twirling more and more, as if she were a cross between Madonna and the flying sister. Yes, it was impressive. Yes, it puts a smile on your face.

Told like that, his show can seem like a disheveled patchwork. This is not the case, because the link in all this is not aesthetic: it is P!nk herself. Her charisma, her total commitment on stage, her sense of self-deprecation, this casual side which means that she does not try to be perfect and manages to be impeccable all the same. There is no doubt that the thousands of people who will meet him on Thursday for the second of his concerts at the Bell Center will also leave with stars in their eyes.