P!nk - TRUSTFALL (Tour Deluxe Edition) (2023) [Hi-Res]

P!nk's ninth album gets into the deep stuff right away. The piano ballad “When I Get There,” which opens the record, is a letter to her father, who passed away in August 2021. “Is there a bar up there where you've got a favorite chair/Where you sit with friends/And talk about the weather,” P!nk wails, her voice breaking. “I know you'll tell me when I get there.” It's an intense way to begin an album—but the pop star has always invited her listeners into her life in an intimate way. “You've got to just dive right into it,” P!nk tells Apple Music. “That's kind of how it is to sit with me, though. It's like, 'Hi, do you want to hear about that one time?' It's like an invitation.”

Over TRUSTFALL’s 13 tracks, P!nk digs into her past few years, grappling with the ever-encroaching feeling that even as people get older, the idea of life having a road map is more and more remote. Take “Turbulence,” a windswept anthem that reminds listeners of how even the most harrowing parts of life are just momentary parts of a long journey: “The panic is temporary/But I'll be permanent/So when it hits, don't forget/As scary as it gets/It's just turbulence,” she sings, her voice breaking slightly on the song's title. “I love 'Turbulence' for that reason,” says P!nk. “I played it for my friend's teenager and she was just reduced to tears, and I knew that it was speaking to her anxiety. I hope that that song helps a little, because it's such a nice idea—as bumpy as it gets, as scary as it gets, it's just turbulence.”

“TRUSTFALL,” which P!nk co-wrote with Fred again.. and Johnny McDaid, has a completely different vibe, but it's another example of P!nk showing how life's lowest moments can result in beauty. It's a simmering dance track that shows off P!nk's airy upper register as she invites listeners to “go where love is on our side”—and it's the first moment where, as P!nk puts it, “I'm like, 'You know what, fuck this. I'm going to dance. I am so exhausted, I'm going to take my clothes off and I'm going to dance. I'm going to roller-skate.”

TRUSTFALL also throws a couple of curveballs with P!nk's collaborators, who allow her to showcase her powerful voice in country-folk settings. She duets with folk-pop outfit The Lumineers on the tense, spare “Long Way to Go,” in which she and vocalist Wesley Schultz regard each other warily, unsure about whether to take the plunge into romance. Swedish sisters First Aid Kit accompany P!nk on the wistful “Kids in Love,” which features a restlessly fingerpicked acoustic guitar and breezy vocal harmonies. And Chris Stapleton helps P!nk close out the album on “Just Say I'm Sorry,” a starlit duet that tackles, with empathy and tenderness, the ways that pride can encroach on love. “It's awesome that I can be this polarizing pop star who then is like, 'Hey, Lumineers, you guys want to do a song?'” she says. “And they're like, 'Yeah, cool.' I'm like, 'Awesome. Stapleton, you want to sing a song?' And he's like, 'Absolutely.' And First Aid Kit. I'm like, Who am I? This is rad.”

These three duets, along with tracks like the glittery disco-funk cut “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” and the punky anti-hater broadside “Hate Me,” show how P!nk's rise to pop's upper echelons has been as successful as it has because of the way she's defied expectations. “I've always been a mystery bag,” P!nk notes. “I'm excited about this album in the way I was excited about [2001's] M!ssundaztood, because it's a body of work, even though it's all kinds of genres.”