By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
The Associated Press

After the multiplatinum success of her last album, Pink could be excused for feeling a little blue about the early response to Try This.

The first single, "Trouble," failed to catch on at radio and didn't crack the Billboard Top 20. And the album debuted at No. 9 with approximately 147,000 copies sold in its first week; M!zzundaztood, notched 220,000 sales in that period when it came out two years ago.

But if Pink is discouraged, she hides it well. Laughing during an interview, the bleached-blonde singer simply shrugs off the troubles of "Trouble."

"I don't judge myself on how well my songs do at radio, or how much my album sells," she says.

"The good thing where I'm at right now is that I'm 24 years old, and I've done everything I said I was going to do when I was a little girl," she continues. "So I've basically reached all the goals that I set out for myself. Now it's just about having fun and causing chaos, and doing (whatever) I want to do."

That's been the program since her debut with 2000's Can't Take Me Home, which introduced Alecia Moore to the world as Pink, a "bad girl" singer with hair of the same hue whose music leaned more toward R&B than pop.

Can't Take Me Home sold more than 1 million copies in the United States and generated a couple of hits, but she wasn't an mainstream, MTV-saturated star.

Yet Pink was happy.

"That's more than I ever needed or wanted," she says. "I just wanted a freakin' record deal, and I didn't want to work in McDonald's anymore."

Throwing folks for a loop

But she also didn't want to repeat herself. With M!zzundaztood, she threw some fans - and her record label, Arista - for a loop with album full of angry, introspective songs about her dysfunctional family and childhood. Her songs leaned more towards rock than the radio-predictable soul that had made her semi-famous.

The album sold five million copies, fueled by songs like "Get the Party Started" and "Just Like a Pill," which connected with fans looking for a break from the teen pop music machine.

In some ways, it was a little too popular for Pink, who saw her choice of Linda Perry as a producer validated as other singers - including Christina Aguilera - began courting Perry to craft hit songs for them as well.

Perry's sudden popularity didn't sit well with Pink, who admits she's a "possessive girl."

In many ways, Try This picks up where M!ssundaztood left off, but without much of the emotional baggage that made a listener feel as if they were eavesdropping on a therapy session: her parents' divorce, her problematic relationship with her mother, her own insecurities.

In some ways, that's by design. The star - who admits to a past of acid-tripping, arrests and other wild behavior - says she's less interested in talking about herself.

"I found myself for the first time being introverted instead of extroverted," she says. "I've never been really good at keeping secrets, or not saying the first thing that comes in my head, but now I have to think about it."

Still, she insists that she's "not as interesting as everyone thinks I am."

Grown up some

"I forget that there's still a mainstream world out there that is still shocked by girls kissing or partying or getting drunk," she says.

Though she's quick to point out that she's not hell-raiser she was in her teen years, the singer admits there's still a part of her that likes to shock people and challenge authority. And she still does - just not in the same way.

"I've calmed down a lot - I'm very proud of myself for how much I've grown up," she says.

"Now, I don't have to fight against my parents or my school or the cops. Now I fight against the music industry and any other machine I see that I wanna break," she says, before adding: "And I like to have a good time."