Pink is the master of ceremonies at the Toronto stop of Summer Carnival tour

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Pink
The Rogers Centre
The night of the moon
Rating: (****stars out of four)

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Pink isn’t f * * * ng Perfect — also the name of one of her popular hits-but she’s pretty tight.

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The 43-year-old singer, who owns some of the best pipes in the business, kicked off the North American portion of her Summer Carnival stadium tour on Monday night at Toronto’s Rogers Centre bringing plenty of pop-and-circumstance to entertain the 50,000 fans gathered at the sold-out show.

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Pink is touring in support of her 2023 album, Trustfall, but left the new material until later in her two-hour gig, preferring instead to kick off her set with such festive hits as get the Party Started — descending from the rafters to a pair of giant lips — and raise the glass before moving on to other popular tracks like Who Knew, Just Like A Pill, Try and what for us.

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(Full disclosure: a sudden case of heat exhaustion on a very humid summer night knocked me down at the end of Brandi Carlile’s set, so I watched the first quarter of Pink’s show from the first aid room where a big bag of ice on the back of my neck brought me back to life.)

Pink, meanwhile, was definitely in the mood for great fun as she performed on a huge stage dominated by those pair of lips — the Blobom Me (One Last Kiss) later featured dancers dressed as leg lips marching along the T-shaped catwalk-and several large video screens.

The first new song of the night, Turbulence, saw Pink and one of her male dancers twirl around the silk sheets performing some of the impressive aerial gymnastics for which she has become known.

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Let’s put it this way, the girl was working hard.

“I hope you liked my makeup for the first three songs — I’m sure I was super cute,” Pink joked, with a nod to the sweat she was working on, before settling on the piano for a Bob Dylan cover to make you feel my love and later covered Sade’s usual love, doing a modern dance with her dancers.

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Highlights of her song included Just Give me a Reason, F***Ing Perfect, Just like Fire (with lots of bursts of fire on stage) which got into Pat Benatar’s heartbreak, Please don’t leave me, when I get there (as she made a dig at controversial Country singer Jason Aldean telling the audience that they were loved even if they were surrounded by horrible people who let go of “Jason Aldean’s vibes”. Yeah, I said it. I went there”), I am here (despite having to restart after a mistake of the guitarist), unimportant and reliable which featured trampoline dancers.

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Pink, who really wore many shades of pink outfits throughout the night, from a pale pink bodice and a long skirt that matched a bright fuchsia feather jacket, was also happy to receive a backstage gift bag from Roots saying it was appropriate for her style: “it was full of sweat pants.”

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