P!nk makes Comerica Park her “Funhouse” during stunning Summer Carnival Tour
While armies of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans argue over who had the better, bigger, more impactful stadium tour of 2023, a sleeper candidate emerged as the most technically impressive tour of the year.
While both Swift’s The Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour are spectacles worthy of their respective icons’ statuses, P!nk takes the cake (or wheel of cheese, as it were) with her Summer Carnival Tour.
It’s clear from the moment P!nk first “gets the party started” that it won’t be any ordinary concert: She makes her entrance by appearing several feet above the stage, where a pair of lips featured at the top of the set open up to reveal her inside.
Touring in support of her ninth album, “Trustfall,” P!nk dives headfirst out of the rafters, performing numerous acrobatic stunts – including numerous flips and being held upside down by two of her dancers at least 20 feet above the stage – all while performing her impressive vocals without missing a beat (there’s no lip syncing here).
It sets a high bar for the rest of the show, but P!nk performs various other acrobatics throughout the show and somehow manages to create an even more impressive moment during the show’s finale that left the audience asking “Please Don’t Leave Me.”
Performing in baseball stadiums can present challenging view lines; the closer you are to the stage, the more of an angle you’re sitting at. That’s not an issue for P!nk, who made sure that everyone at Comerica Park – even those in the nosebleeds – had a front row seat.
“I’m coming to see you in the back,” she told the audience as her band began playing the last song of the night, “So What,” while two dancers strapped her into a harness.
As she reached the end of the first verse, it became clear what she meant: P!nk was suddenly hurtling through the air with the momentum of a slingshot, flipping around like an object floating through space until she was floating just a couple feet in front of the upper bowl audience members seated directly back from the stage. She then did several laps around the entire perimeter of the stadium, periodically lowering to the middle of the two side floor sections where she did handstands and other stunts, all while continuing to sing.
Even if you knew to expect the stunt from seeing videos on social media, nothing can prepare you to actually see P!nk flying through the air at you with your own eyes.
Another challenge – or feature, depending on how you view it – of stadium shows is their lack of intimacy.
When you’re on the level of Swift or Beyoncé, your every movement and word are broadcast to the world and heavily analyzed; and so, your every movement and word must be carefully planned. Attending most stadium tours can often be likened more to attending a movie or a Broadway musical than to concerts at smaller venues because the shows are almost entirely standardized from city to city with very little variation and few surprises from night to night.
This theoretically ensures that there are no winners or losers, since each crowd gets roughly the same experience, but it also means fewer opportunities for special moments that make your show feel unique or like you’re genuinely spending time with one of your favorite artists.
This wasn’t an issue for P!nk, who bantered with the audience about the number of insects swarming her piano under the stage lights, raising her kids (and the lack of privacy that can come with, sharing a story about them following her into the bathroom) and continuing to perform impressive aerial stunts at the age of 43 (something Swift, who has previously voiced her anxiety about the way “women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,” would surely admire).
The longevity of P!nk’s career is clear throughout the show, with a setlist that is heavy on numerous hits but also features some deep cuts from her earlier albums and some album tracks from Trustfall.
In short, the entire tour – from the stunning choreography to the well-balanced setlist – could be described as “F**kin’ Perfect.”
If you missed the show at Comerica Park, P!nk is returning to Detroit in October for two back-to-back nights at the Little Caesars Arena as part of her “P!NK LIVE 2024 TOUR,” seemingly an unnamed continuation of her Trustfall Tour that ran concurrently with the Summer Carnival Tour. Additional stops are planned for Columbus on Oct. 9 and Milwaukee on Oct. 23.
She’s also bringing the Summer Carnival Tour to Chicago on Aug. 24 and Indianapolis on Oct. 12.
If you’re on the fence about whether it’s worth the trip to one of those cities, take it from us: You’ve got to get up and try.
This review originally appeared Aug. 18, 2023.