Melodrama as Default Mode of Popular Culture

P!nk’s Trustfall (2023) album operates as a dramatic song cycle that responds to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Inherently positive and individualistic, it conforms to Linda Williams’s conception of American (rather than French) traditions of melodrama. Trustfall’s thirteen songs constitute an emotional roller-coaster ride, expressing P!nk’s personal feelings of grief, pain, and fear, but they also enable the performer to act as victim and villain, as well as become an ironic superhero intent on helping younger people deal with their anxieties. Supporting Williams’s assertion that melodrama is the default mode of imagining in contemporary media, this chapter describes how P!nk’s lyrics, vocals, and choreography are inherently melodramatic. Analysis of some of Trustfall’s songs and the promotional video for the title track offers insights into how melodrama continues to be used by popular entertainers in the United States to address major social problems, especially seemingly intractable ones.