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It’s an idyllic, sunny Tuesday afternoon in early March, and Pink is getting ready to play some tennis at Desert Smash, the celebrity and professional tennis charity event held each year at California’s La Quinta Resort & Club.
“I love tennis and I love raising money for good causes. So easy, easy, easy combination,” the singer says about being a part of the event, which raised $1.3 million for the WTA Foundation’s Global Women’s Health Fund and UNICEF. “And it’s such a great event. I feel like everyone here, no matter what the role is, is having a good time.”
Later in the afternoon, the singer-songwriter is set to play alongside Jon Lovitz (“I’m playing you later!” Pink sings to Lovitz in the middle of our interview. “Please don’t be so good!”) and Cheri Oteri (“Alecia, you’re like free therapy,” Oteri tells Pink.)
Before Desert Smash, Pink concluded her three-year global trek, dubbed the Summer Carnival Tour, a few months back in November, and now says she’s “back on the PTSA … yeah, I’m doing the damn thing. I love life.”
Although you won’t find Pink on tour right now, fans will still have to wait for the singer to release new music. Instead, she has a few other important events on her schedule, but they don’t include getting into the studio.
“No, no, no, not at all,” Pink later tells us when asked if she’s writing new tunes. “Nope. I write poetry. I write a lot. I’m a writer, but I’m writing other things but not music. My daughter is about to be in a big theater production and I’m helping her. And my boy is doing baseball so that’s where I’m at. I know it’s not very Rolling Stone, but it’s so much joy.”
While Pink wrapped the 131-concert Summer Carnival Tour late last year, the Grammy winner returned to the stage to perform a show-stopping set at the FireAid Benefit Concert in Los Angeles in January, including covers of Led Zeppelin‘s “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” and Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee.”
“I know my audience, let’s put it that way,” Pink says. “And they were like, ‘Come sing three songs.’ And I’m like I’m not singing three Pink songs. I’ll do one. But it’s funny when I do a show I have two-and-a-half hours and 25 songs and I’ve never lip-synced a day in my life, and I’m a screamer, like I sing hard.
Continues Pink: “So I kind of have to take it easy a little bit, and then I’m like, ‘Three songs, oh, I can just let it go.’ Led Zeppelin. Janis Joplin. I mean, those are my [go-tos] — I do those in shows also but ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’ is one of all the songs I’ve covered in my life — obviously Janis is my spiderweb — but that’s a song you can lose yourself in, and I like to scream.”
Rolling Stone sat down with Pink to chat more about a few of her go-to products for the road or studio, what she listens to before a performance, and more essentials, below.
Traditional Medicinals Tea Organic Throat Coat
$4.99
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“I live on Throat Coat, which is a really boring thing to say,” Pink says of her touring and performing essential. “But I tell every singer — all my young theater kids right now — I’m just trying to get them acclimated to the taste.”
But Throat Coat isn’t Pink’s only essential drink: “I like the AG1 powder packets for vitamins, greens.”
Advil
$9.88
Buy Now On Amazon
“I use Advil, am I allowed to say that? Advil. Lots and lots and lots of Advil.”
Beyond stocking pain reliever in her dressing room, Pink adds, “PEZ, I love PEZ. My dressing room used to be whiskey and cigarettes, and now it’s like ball pits and bounce houses [laughs], which I love also.”
Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires”
$0.69
Buy Now On Amazon
What does Pink listen to before a show or performance? “You wouldn’t believe it,” she says, “but I have the saddest playlist in the world: I listen to ‘If We Were Vampires,’ [laughs] Jason Isbell.”
Along with listening to Isbell’s ballad before a gig, Pink adds, “I just really like Sade and yeah, my husband’s like, ‘Do you wanna get, like, hyped at all?” And I’m like, ‘I am. I’m getting hyped.’”
R13 Trucker Hat
$125
Buy Now at r13
“I’m obsessed with these R13 hats because I have one in every color,” Pink says, wearing one of the brand’s green caps. “… I should be sponsored, but I’m not.”
