P!nk

Alecia Beth Moore was born September 8, 1979, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was grinding early: at 15 she formed the R&B girl group Choice, which signed to LaFace Records in 1995 and dissolved in 1998 without a major release. She stayed on LaFace solo, and her debut Can't Take Me Home (April 2000) — an R&B record anchored by "There You Go" — went double platinum in the US and sold more than four million copies worldwide. In 2001 she joined Christina Aguilera, Mýa, and Lil' Kim on the "Lady Marmalade" cover for the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack; it topped thirteen charts around the world, including the US, and won her a first Grammy, for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Then she blew the whole plan up. Tired of being marketed as another cookie-cutter pop act, she seized creative control of her second album and recruited Linda Perry — the former 4 Non Blondes singer she'd idolized as a teenager. Missundaztood, released in November 2001 and named for her conviction that people had the wrong picture of her, became her best-seller ever: more than 13 million copies worldwide, the eighth best-selling album of 2002 globally, powered by "Get the Party Started," "Don't Let Me Get Me," "Just Like a Pill," and "Family Portrait." The pop girl who sneered at pop stardom outsold most of the pop stars.

Try This (2003) sold less but won her another Grammy, for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and the back half of the decade was the rebound: I'm Not Dead (2006) and Funhouse (2008) delivered Top 10 hits in "Who Knew" and "U + Ur Hand" and, in 2008, the US No. 1 "So What." She never stopped — the career kept climbing long past the decade, to more than 135 million records sold and three Grammys — but the 2000s run is the era this entry remembers: spiky hair, fishnet gloves, and the sound of a pop star refusing to behave.