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You took my hand, you showed me how you promised me you'd be around.

Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is the Song Number One series?

On our last episode, we talked about the punchy, pugilistic, Pink, who emerged from the teen pop era

as an R&B star, then pivoted to a more rock-oriented sound on her blockbuster album Misunderstood,

which spawned a string of hits and went quintuple platinum. But its follow-up, Try This, flopped,

and we're now in the mid-2000s when Pink is figuring out what to try next.

Discouraged by the poor response to Try This,

Pink regrouped in 2004 and 2005, woodshedding material for her next album.

While she was off the radar, new hybrids of rock and pop were storming the charts, ranging from Kelly Clarkson's smash, Since You Been Gone, which grafted indie rock style onto Pure Pop.

But since you've been gone,

I can't breathe for the first time.

I'm so moving on the other year, yeah, yeah.

Thanks to you, now I get what I want. To the danceable, To the danceable neo-gardeau

The Killers

I just can look

It's killing me

And taking control,

with the ladies rocking out,

and the rock dudes copping dance rhythms,

the radio in the mid-aughts seemed to vindicate Pink, the original millennial pop rock hybridizer.

...