P!nk - "Who Knew" (Single (Named) Ladies #30)
Full name: Alecia Beth Moore (random mononym)
There aren't many artists in my list this time that I've seen perform live. Pink (I'm ditching the exclamation point stylization) is one of the few. She was the halftime performer for the Rookie Challenge game the last time the Bay Area hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 2000. This appears to have been wiped from everyone's collective memory except mine because I wasn't able to find anything on the Internet to corroborate it.
The game is on YT but without the halftime festivities.
Pink was a brand new artist at the time; she'd just released her debut single and her first album was still a few months off in the future. She had been discovered and signed by LA Reid and Babyface using the tried-and-true formula of promoting a White artist who sings Black. To be eligible for my category, artist has to take on their single name at the beginning of their career but not everyone lives up to the honor. I wouldn't have thought so at the time but she's gone on to have a career worthy of monomyn status with over 135 million records sold, multiple Grammy awards and singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
"Who Knew" is a mid-tempo rocker written and produced by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin. It bears more than a passing resemblance to Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" which was also a Martin creation. Whatever its origin, "Who Knew" is a great pop song that stuck in my head when I was making my list.
The video is set in a carnival in a parallel universe to Lisa P's. Pink was 27 at the time but she plays the older wiser observer of a teenage love triangle between a girl, a boy and his drugs.