Most Girls - P!nk

ALL TIME GREATEST SINGLES - #990

MOST GIRLS

P!nk

(D. Thomas, Babyface) Arista 74321 79201 2

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Chart Entry: 4th September, 2000

Highest Position: #1

Accreditation: Platinum

Points: 102,645

From the album "Can't Take Me Home".

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The new hero of female pop flexed her muscles nice and early in her career, following her #2 debut, "There You Go" with the #1 Australian hit, "Most Girls". It was as if a higher power was showing us the past and future all at once when P!nk broke up a power struggle between the two biggest female artists of all time, Madonna and Kylie Minogue, who were swapping the top position almost weekly with "Music" and "On A Night Like This". This little seven week period of the charts in 2000 highlighted the three biggest female artists of all time in the Australian charts.

At just 15 years old, Alecia Moore, better known as her nickname "Pink", joined R&B girl group, Choice. They were picked up by LaFace Records, a joint venture of L.A. Reid and Babyface, and soon a record deal was sealed including a debut album all ready to go. That album never saw an official release, but there is a Choice moment on the soundtrack for Shaquille O'Neal's 1996 film, Kazaam.

Choice disbanded in 1998, but P!nk continued her association with LaFace, Babyface producing most of her debut album, Can't Take Me Home. Of course, this meant that P!nk was also associated with the R&B genre, nestling alongside Destiny's Child and *NSync as her contemporaries, and finding herself opening concerts for the latter of the two.

"Most Girls" itself fitted snuggly alongside any on the R&B releases at the time. The disjointed beat and sparse instrumentation typical of the style. There were signs that the attitude was there, but P!nk hadn't been fully "dissed" just yet, and was still looking for a man to offer her "real love". The video clip segued from "There You Go", changing its tune slightly from the motorcycle babe of the first to a leather clad warehouse boxer in the second. She was knocking out the weaker female opponents then just as she is now on the charts. In the end, P!nk finds her "real love" with a very handsome man in true "happy ending" style. Ah, R&B.

P!nk admitted that the two year period it took to record and promote Can't Take Me Home trapped her as an artist, unable to express her real musical influences. Despite her co-writing seven tracks, there's hardly a shred of evidence that the P!nk we now know had anything to do with the album. But we all have to make a start somewhere, and Can't Take Me Home still gave her estimated worldwide sales of 5 million copies, an amazing effort given the fact that the album only ever reached the top ten in Australia alone, and that was at #10.

P!nk's success in Australia has never declined. Her frequent trips to our shores are reward for our devotion to her right from the start. Apart from Can't Take Me Home finding its highest positioning on the Australian charts, we were also the only country to place any of the albums' releases at the top. Her collaboration on "Lady Marmalade" aside, it took a second album for the UK to honour her with a #1 single, 2002's "Just Like A Pill", and an amazing five album wait for 2008's "So What" to finally give her a US Billboard #1.

"Most Girls" was the first of five #1 singles in Australia, her biggest tally in a single country, and one of eighteen top ten hits, making her Greatest Hits...So Far!!! set packed full of hits. Unfortunately, unlike Madonna and Kylie, P!nk seems to be a little embarrassed by her earlier works, leaving them out of her concerts. "Most Girls", unlike "Holiday" and "I Should Be So Lucky", hasn't been part of a P!nk show since 2004, and so becomes one of those forgotten hits in the P!nk catalogue.

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Chart Run: 21.9.7.2.1.2.2.2.8.8.10.11.16.21.23.29.40.39.51.56.89.89 (22 weeks)

(ARIA Top 100)