Pink

Though more feisty than subversive, Dead nonetheless confirms Pink's status as our foremost anti-pop pop star. Most are torched love songs -- bitterly (and predictably) cathartic -- but "Dear Mr. President" teams the colorful chanteuse with flamboyant folk stars The Indigo Girls. "You've come a long way from whisky and cocaine," Pink says to an unnamed politician.

Pink broke through with Can't Take Me Home, a sexy teen-pop disco cruise from a Philly gal
with New Wave hair you could fry an egg on. On her second album, Missundaztood, the
twenty-two-year-old abandons R&B to indulge her dream of being a hard-rock chick, and
the result is practically the teen-pop In Utero. She dishes about self-loathing ("Lonely Girl"),
drug abuse ("Just Like a Pill"), parental divorce ("Family Portrait") and, of course,... More >

Teen idols have matured at their peril since Del Shannon told us the name he was born with, and between the Internet gossip roast and Carson Daly's Dick Clark act, the current crop will have it even tougher. Which makes this meeting of L.A. Reid's double-platinum Philadelphia white girl and justly forgotten 4 Non Blondes emoter Linda Perry even more of a feat. These are pop songs in the sense that they deliver their payloads in 90 seconds. But they're also confessional, dark, downtempo--and, OK, a little gauche sometimes, which just makes them seem realer. Despite Pink's audacious claim that she's not as pretty as "damn Britney Spears," celebrity anxiety takes a backseat to a credible personal pain rooted in credible family travails, a pain held at bay by expression. Artistically, it's a next step for a genre I never thought would take one. I wish I believed Justin Timberlake's solo debut will sound half as honest, frustrated, and fulfilled. (Grade - A)