claudiamorgan-blog1

[claudiamorgan-blog1]

P!NK

       Pinks background in writing all of her own songs, created a sound that a variety of people can listen to causing for her to be one of the most diverse artists we’ve seen. In today’s generation, genres have emerged together and have lost its image causing for everything to fall under the category of pop. Pinks music does fall under pop, but her music has a rock and roll style to it causing her genre of music to be Rock Pop.        Pink (Alecia Moore) is a bad ass to say the least. Her name is Pink because she said when she get nervous she blushes and her cheeks get pink. As Pink she addresses gender roles, beauty standards, and feminism in all of her songs. She writes every single song herself as well, and a lot of artists can’t even do that! In her interview with Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/8e07d1ca-da00-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b48) she says “I’m a selfish songwriter, I write about my problems,”, she might think she is selfish but she makes great songs. She is an inspiration to women all across the world and she only sings from personal experiences that she’s been through, unlike other artists. Pink is not a normal female artist, she doesn’t care about how she looks to other people, she only cares about what she looks like for herself. Most female artists are stereotypical in how they look, for example Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato are of course feminists but how they portray their look is more of a “let me show off my body for people” and Pink isn’t like that at all. She doesn’t try to be model perfect for her fans she has her own look, like a punk rock look. In 2017 she won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and she talked about how her daughter was being made fun of and was told that she looked like a boy, Pink sat her daughter down and said, “Do you see me changing my look for people?”, “Do you see me growing my hair out to look more like a girl?, she is teaching her daughter not to care about what people think of you. She also brings up how she is like Freddie Mercury and Elton because they never cared about how they looked. You can see the whole video here on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_gA5vkJJc4). Pink is the first known female artist that really tries to convey her message about being YOU and she means it.        In her song F****** Perfect she sings about how hard it is to fit in and that trying that hard is a waste of time anyways because being yourself and accepting who you are is the best thing you can do for yourself. She is putting into her fans head that depression is a real thing and if you have it, you need to take a step back and realize that you are perfect and that you will one day be perfect to someone else. Criticism has always been apart of Pinks career, her song Don’t Let Me Get Me is about how if you stay true to yourself, you can do anything you want. In her music video she is the outcast and throughout the video it is her showing us that she doesn’t even want to fit in and look like every other so called “pretty girl”. This song was one of her first songs in 2001 so pretty much the start of her career and since then she has always written songs with the same message of staying true to yourself, she is portraying messages throughout all of her songs of course. She wants her audience to really listen to her lyrics and act on them. Pink grew up with divorced parents and she knows that it is a problem for many people as well, so she puts her own family in a lot of her videos. True is one of her songs that has her husband and daughter in and it is about how her husband and her have true love and will do anything to keep it. Again, this is something she has been through and is writing a song for people to listen to and to help them if they’ve been through the same thing.        In her music videos she pretty much keeps the punk rock look that she has built for herself, but she also shows us the talents that she has. In her music video for Just Like Fire, she shows off her gymnastic skills with her doing a curtain dance. In Try the whole video is her doing a lyrical dance that goes perfectly with the theme of the song and she looks stunning. Stupid Girls is a song she sang that is about Hollywood’s typical girls and she really is telling her audience how she feels about all of this and how “stupid” all of the girls are that will do anything for fame. She says, “I’m so glad I have never fit in, that will never be me.” And that right there are real words of advice from Pink that she has stuck to for years. One of her videos from when she first started making music really stood out, which was Get the Party Started, Pink really showed how edgy she was and how she has a lot of attitude. Her number 1 music video would be So What because she really shows how she doesn’t need anyone and knows how badass she is. Pink is really into not putting up with anyone and that is why most of her songs are about serious things that go on in the world not just singing a song about nothing or something that doesn’t matter. Pink knows that people like to listen to music more when there is a story behind the lyrics and all of Pinks songs have a meaning behind them.        Pink has 5.2 million followers on Instagram, which isn’t as much as most artists that have been around in a way shorter time period than her. This might be because he Instagram is not a place for her to go and post all of her new albums and songs or a place for her to post when he next concert is. Her Instagram is a normal Instagram where she posts her family, pictures and videos of her children and her husband. They aren’t perfectly photoshopped and heavily edited pictures, it is her real life just the way it is. Family is obviously the most important thing to her she says in this interview on Billboard “When touring stops working for the kids, if they decide they just want to be home and have a normal life, whatever that means, I’ll stop, because they are by far the priority,”. (https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8455840/pink-talks-touring-with-kids-interview) Pink has 31.1 million followers on twitter which is 6 times more followers than her Instagram does. How she portrays herself on twitter really shows what she is all about. She mostly retweets people that quote trumps tweets talking about how bad of a person he is, and she quotes her fans that post pictures of them at her concerts and she thanks them for being there. Most artists do not even take the time of day to reach put to their fans and answer their tweets. So, you can see how different she is on social media compared to everyone else.        Performances for Pink are a piece of cake for her. Pink always goes all out for her performances and shows how many talents she has. We will start with her 2018 Grammy performance, she didn’t do anything drastic like she usually does but what she did do was she had a sign language interpreter on the stage with her interpreting all of her lyrics to really convey her message to her audience. She just wore a simple white t-shirt for her performance but she usually goes for a gymnastic type of outfit because of how much moving around she does. She always has so much energy on and off stage, I mean off stage because in 2017 Pink decided she wanted to do her performance on the side of the Marriott building. This performance was so different than any other performance the world has seen because she was singing and dancing but still sounded phenomenal. She always sings perfectly while she dances even after she’s been dancing for two minutes straight and she doesn’t even seem like she is out of breath! In the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, 2012 iHeart Radio Music Festival, and the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, she was in the air for all of these performances, from swinging on a trapeze to twisting around on a ring harness, to flying on a clock with fire, I guess you can say she’s a pretty dangerous yet talented performer.        You can see how diverse Pink is with everything she does from the way looks, what she sings about, how she acts in and out of her music videos, and by the way she performs. Pink has been an inspiration to me and millions across the world and hopefully she stays true to herself and her fans for many more years.

[claudiamorgan-blog1]

Adventuring the Sea...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KG5IdglWR6ERliU3eT2Wy

My best friend Ella and I walked on the plane after finding out her dad got us first class tickets to Miami for our 6-day cruise. We walked to our seats, and since this was my first plane ride, Ella let me have the window seat. While we were waiting to take off her dad ordered a drink, keep in mind it’s 6 o’clock in the morning. We felt so fancy ordering apple juice. We started to take off and I had no idea what to expect, I just stared out the window and Ella’s parents were staring at me trying to figure out if I liked it or not. I loved it so much, but I ended up falling asleep 20 minutes in to the plane ride. After we landed, we got a taxi to where we needed to board the cruise ship. When we got out of the taxi, right away 2 luggage men took our bags, so they could be sent up to our rooms on the ship. We walked onto the ship after waiting in an extremely long line just to be told that we had to wait 2 more hours before we could go to our rooms. We found a place to sit, but we were sweating because we weren’t dressed for the Miami weather since it was cold back home. The only thing that made it better was the taco buffet and the music playing in the background. It made me feel like I didn’t have a care in the world. Finally, Ella’s family and I could go to our rooms to unpack. The rest of day we tanned and went to bed early because we couldn’t wait for the next day since it was a day at sea. The next day, we slept in and had a lazy morning, then later met up with Ella’s parents for the breakfast buffet. Ella and I explored the ship and went to every single floor, it was huge! We went to the main deck to tan for a while, it made me really happy because everyone on the ship looked like they were having an amazing time. After being outside all day, we got ready for the ship’s formal dinner night. The dinner was less than stellar but the dessert made up for it in the end. I woke up the next day in Jamaica on my 18th birthday, I felt like the happiest person on earth. After getting off the boat we took a bus to our first excursion, and in Jamaica they drive on the left side of the road, so it felt so weird. We went to our excursions, which was horseback riding on the beach and then Dunn’s River Falls. Ella and I got matching Bob Marley t-shirts and matching anklets from a shop on the island. For my birthday dinner, Ella’s parents made reservations for us to go to a fancy Asian restaurant on the ship. After dinner Ella and I got soft served ice cream and met some friends. Our curfew with Ella’s parents was 12:00am but since we had a different room than them we stayed out all night with our new friends Dylan and AJ. The next stop was the Cayman Islands, and we were going snorkeling and to Stingray City. We took a smaller boat to our destinations and I was at the front of the boat looking into the water. I had never seen water so clear and blue, the ocean floor looked so close to us, but it was 50 feet deep. Snorkeling tired me and Ella out so when we got back to our room we took a 2-hour nap. We woke up and got ready for another dinner, this time we ate sushi and it was the best sushi I ever had. There was a deck party after dinner and the DJ played all the throw backs, like the Cupid Shuffle, and the Macarena. Everyone was dancing, and we found Dylan and AJ that we met the night before and danced with them. We woke up in Cozumel and our excursion was to swim with the dolphins and hang out on the beach. Swimming with the dolphins was such a unique experience, plus it was something I’ve always wanted to do. So, then we pretty much just relaxed on the beach until it was time to go back on the ship. It was pretty late when we got back on the ship, so we went to the pool with Dylan and AJ and we were there till 2 in the morning. Ella and I went back to our room and couldn’t sleep, we adventured around the ship all night, so we could take it all in one last time We pretty much stayed up until 6 in the morning, got two hours of sleep, then left at 8 am to board the plane back to reality.