Sass and Cadence.(Funhouse)(Sound recording review)

"Funhouse," the new album by Alecia Moore, who calls herself Pink, has already spawned an enormous hit--her first solo No. 1 in the U.S.--called "So What," an explosion of brattiness and rock-star entitlement that is both maddening and hard to shake. There are cracks in "Funhouse," though, which expose the near-impossible task of playing a rebel who also feels she deserves the chart successes of the rivals she derides, and the challenge of maintaining a persona while employing blue-chip songwriters to help articulate it. Pink's being Pink depends on our believing that she has escaped some sort of assembly-line purgatory. Her best songs suggest that she has simply fashioned a better assembly line.

For years, Pink's career has been predicated on the idea that she is both a pop star and not a pop star. The exception was her first album, "Can't Take Me Home" (2000), which was modelled on the work of acts like Destiny's Child and Christina Aguilera. Although it presented the image of an unbiddable young woman, the R. & B. rhythm tracks could have been anybody's, and Pink sang in a high, fluttery style that was far removed from the throaty snarl that became her resting place.

The song that brought Pink to a larger audience was a 2001 collaborative remake of Labelle's "Lady Marmalade." It was stylistically faithful to the funk rock of the original seventies hit, but the collaborators--Christina Aguilera, Mya, Missy Elliot, and Lil' Kim--represented of-the-minute rap and R. & B. Though the remake adds nothing to the original (except Lil' Kim's charmingly crass rap), it bristles with energy and is good, dumb fun. Pink made her mark with her turn on the second verse, where, finally, she sang in her natural voice, which is reminiscent of a more together Janis Joplin: low, slightly burred, full of attitude, and hard. Nevertheless, it was probably the song's video--Pink wearing a top hat and bulletproof underwear--that lodged her in the public's consciousness.

Later that year, Pink rejected her assigned genre and, on her second album, "Missundaztood," tried something new. In the song "Don't Let Me Get Me," she described the earlier album as a Faustian bargain, with L. A. Reid, the head of LaFace Records, sporting the horns. "L.A. told me, 'You'll be a pop star,' " Pink sang. " 'All you have to change is everything you are.' " Mostly co-written with the songwriter Linda Perry, "Missundaztood" was a blend of rock and dance that made a deft and euphoric break from R. & B. Propelled by the hit "Get the Party Started," the album has sold more than five million copies in this country, and is still her best-selling album by a healthy margin. It placed Pink high in the pecking order, and branded Perry as a reliable hitmaker. (Perry, as it happened, went on to become a frequent collaborator with Christina Aguilera.)

Written and produced by Perry, "Get the Party Started" was driven by a bouncing beat and keyboards that hint at various dance musics without being restricted to any of them, and a singing style that balances the sass of rock music with the cadence of rap. The video (a form that has continued to be important for Pink) makes her stylistic schism clear. No more choreographed dancers in futuristic pleather: we get to see Pink be at once festive and vulnerable--singing into a hair dryer, nervously checking for untoward body odors, and bouncing around town on a skateboard pilfered from an awestruck boy fan. This strategy works: with Pink acting like herself and a professional like Perry providing fully formed songs, Team Pink is a blast.

Since "Missundaztood," the problem has been making sure that the hired guns are as good as Perry, and that Pink--a performer who isn't a natural songwriter--hasn't assumed too much control. (Things tend to get particularly bad when Pink sings ...