Review: Pink earns a perfect 10 for her mix of gymnastics and music at Target Field

Pink perched high above Target Field on Thursday night, right below the Minnie-and-Paul neon sign in center field, and then she j-u-u-u-u-mped through a pair of luscious red lips on bungee cords, falling maybe 70 feet. And belting "Get the Party Started." Boing! Bang! Boom!

Pink knows how to make an entrance. Always has.

This time with fireworks, somersaults, aerial choreography, singing upside down offering her 2001 party starter.

The rest of the Grammy-winning pop star's 110-minute performance featured plenty of fireworks, gymnastics, pageantry and emotive vocals. And, of course, plenty of things pink: flamingo scooters, a leather jacket, a feather jacket, a sequined jacket, leotards, animated martinis, animated dolphins, a neon flamingo, a tarp over the Twins pitching mound, pink lips headdresses on her dancers while she sported pink epaulettes on her black leather jacket. Heck, the audience was so awash in pink that you might have thought they were headed to a "Barbie" convention.

In the summer of 2023, "Barbie" may be more kitschy and smugly cool, Beyoncé may be more rhythmic and purposeful, and Taylor Swift may be more extravagant and fan-fulfilling. But Pink tops those cultural forces when it comes to derring-do, approachability and realness.

While all the aerial work is meticulously planned, Pink, 43, was very much in the moment. She chatted with fans, including one youngster who was at her first concert ("Mom is probably having more fun"), took off her shoes and "sweaty socks," (her words) and shared about a trip on Wednesday to Mall of America to buy school supplies where a woman at the register said, "Don't be offended: You look like Pink."

That was the apt intro to "Irrelevant," which doubles as Pink's response to criticism and a pro-protesting anthem, a rare rocker in a set of mostly pop bops. The surging 2022 women's rights tune was one of the night's highlights.

The Philadelphia singer-songwriter explained that she doesn't write love songs so therefore she turned to some romantic covers, Sade's sultry "No Ordinary Love" and Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love," which she performed solo on piano.

Despite the overwhelming setting and meticulously orchestrated production of her Summer Carnival Tour, Pink let her hair down for an acoustic segment, featuring a bit of conversation and the harmony-filled "Please Don't Leave Me," "Cover Me in Sunshine" (co-starring her daughter Willow Sage Hart, age 12, who earned the night's loudest applause) and "When I Get There," a tender ballad about her late father.

Whether crooning ballads or belting bops, Pink once again proved a formidable vocalist, a rich contralto with power, nuance and versatility. On one song, there was a forlorn ache in her voice, on another tune there was don't-mess-with-me defiance and then unbridled joy on yet another.

Supported by five musicians, three backup singers and 10 dancers, Pink put on a spectacle that was as impressive as her last arena tour in 2018-19. This time, she probably skipped around the stage more often than she danced, but this former childhood gymnast may have been more preoccupied with other aspects of her fast-paced production.

Ten years after making her first Twin Cities arena headline appearance, Pink set a concert attendance record at Target Field, in her first Minnesota stadium gig. Concert promoter Live Nation did not provide the final figure, but Twins officials confirmed attendance surpassed the old mark of 44,152 established by Kenny Chesney in 2015.

And, as Pink always does, she made an exit that was more spectacular than her grand entrance. For the closing "So What," she soared over the crowd via an elaborate system of wires — all the way up to the third deck — and around the entire stadium, somersaulting and even pausing at one point to do a one-arm handstand atop a 10-foot-high scaffold on the field.

Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and even Barbie would have given Pink a perfect 10.