Despite having a career that's spanned over 16 years, Pink often (unfairly) gets left out of the pantheon of pop's leading ladies. That's not to say that the singer doesn't have the vocal chops of her contemporaries, or to suggest that she just doesn't have the hits. She does, by the bucket load.

Beginning her career as an R&B singer, Pink quickly found her groove somewhere in between the attitude of 4 Non-Blondes and the hit-making ability of Britney Spears.

Songs like 'Just Like A Pill', 'Get The Party Started', 'Trouble' and more recently 'Just Give Me A Reason' have proved that the singer can produce hit song after hit song. Even this year's Alice In Wonderland soundtrack song, 'Just Like Fire', cracked the Billboard Hot 100.

Of course, with a career that's lasted nearly two decades, there's bound to be a few stories to tell. So, we've done our best Angela Lansbury impression and done some investigating into the surprising stories behind her biggest hits…

1. 'Don't Let Me Get Me' was born from a need to break free…

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While Pink initially flirted with '00s R&B with her debut album, it wasn't until her 2002 sophomore effort, Missundazstood (yes, that's really how it's spelt), that she truly found her groove with a blend of punky pop rock.

While the album's first single, 'Let's Get The Party Started', was a mission statement of a lead single, it was the album's second cut, 'Don't Let Me Get Me' that would become a blueprint for Pink's subsequent career: autobiographical songs filled with attitude.

Working mainly with Linda Perry on Missundazstood, Pink wanted to showcase a different side to herself. "In the beginning I just said, 'What do you feel?' and [Pink] would just sit behind the piano and sing," Perry recalled.

As a result of opening up, Pink decided to tell it how it really was. The track, which wasn't actually written with Perry but producer Dallas Austin, was a direct dig at record label execs and popstar marketing (both Britney Spears and LA Reid get namechecked in the song). Allegedly, LA Reid wasn't that happy with the direction that Pink's material was going down after she'd established herself in Atlanta as an R&B singer.

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"The thing about Missundazstood is that, lyrically, it's a brilliant record. She wrote most, if not all, of the lyrics on the record," LA Reid said about the album during a TV special, The Rise & Rise of Pink before going on to deny that he'd told the singer to change who she was. "She was poking fun at me," he said.

"I think she does prove a point here," he continued. "You can be a popstar and have a brain, and have some creativity, and have some depth, and have some feelings, and not be afraid to bare those feelings."

Speaking about the song during the recording of MTV's Making The Video, Pink explained that the song was "about feeling inadequate and wanting to get away from yourself".

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Continuing, she said: "It's somewhat autobiographical for the most part. In class I was definitely always getting in to trouble…To me any truth is good whether it hurts or not. So me looking in the mirror standing next to what most people would call 'perfect girl'…I have those feelings, I think every girl does. I think it's important for girls to know that, yeah I'm here, I'm doing my thing, I'm a strong individual and I've gained that strength over the years, but I'm still up in the mirror and try to pat my hips in."

About referencing Britney in the track, Pink claims that she wasn't dissing the pop princess. Instead she was giving her a compliment. "I don't want to get my point misconstrued," Pink explained. "It's more about the record company than it is about Britney Spears."

Despite the song's success (it charted in the top 10 in both the US and the UK), Pink told The L.A. Times, that she hated performing the song. "I wish I could burn that song and never sing it again," she said.

2. With 'Just Like A Pill', Pink got upset over an elephant…

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Like 'Don't Let Me Get Me', Pink's third single from Missundazstood, 'Just Like A Pill', was co-written with Dallas Austin.

Like a lot of the album, Pink wanted to get into the nitty gritty of who she was a person. Sitting down with Dallas Austin, she decided she wanted to write a song that dealt with her youth. "I used to be on drugs, I should write a song about it," she said to the L.A. Times. "When you're young, you think your ideas are so clever."

According to the book, Split Personality: Pink, the song isn't to be taken too literally, however. Rather it uses drugs as a metaphor for toxic relationships. Despite this, the singer has been candid about her use of narcotics.

In a 2012 interview with VH1, she revealed that she started smoking marijuana aged 11 and by 13 was taking drugs like ecstasy, PCP and even crystal meth. It wasn't until a brush with death aged 15 that she decided to call it quits with the drugs.

"One week it's crystal, one week it's back to coke," she said about that time to ABC News. "And the next week it's heroin. I got out before it went there."

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As with most of the album, Pink wasn't afraid to get personal. "I don't know how to keep my own secrets," she said. "I can keep other people's secrets. … It's hard, after the fact, when everybody knows everything about you, and you're like, 'Damn, I shouldn't have said that.' But I don't think about it at the time. I think it's good because the deeper inside you go the more you're related to somebody else, because life is life – everybody goes through the same things."

The song's video, which was directed by Francis Lawrence, saw the singer dye her hair black and was slightly darker than her previous videos.

One scene saw the singer perform in front of an elephant, something that actually ended up really bugging her. "I felt so bad," she said to VH1, "I got into a fight with the trainer. This poor elephant; it's in a warehouse where it has to keep getting down on its hands and knees. This is a huge elephant, it's so cute, and I could see how painful it was for it to get down on its hands and knees, and I'm like, 'Can we not do this anymore? I think we got the take, you know, it's enough'."

After confronting the trainer, who insisted that the elephant was fine, Pink decided that she would no longer feature animals in her music videos.

Nevertheless, the video is still one of the singer's favourites to this day.

3. 'Family Portrait' started its life when Pink was just nine years old…

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Obviously with Missundazstood, Pink was mining into the darkest parts of her life, and no song delved deeper than 'Family Portrait'.

A starkly autobiographical song, the track deals with the divorce of Pink's parents. In fact, the track began as a poem that the singer wrote when she was nine, the year her father left her mother. "That was my life," Pink explained to The Telegraph. "I was a daddy's girl and I was devastated when he left because my mum and I never really got along. But it was also, 'God what a relief.' You spend the first nine years of your life afraid of what's going to happen in your house and then you just have quiet. I flinch now when people fight. I can't handle it."

Talking to ABC News about recording the song, Pink recalled how it was like 20 minutes had bypassed her by. "I went into the studio and I didn't know what I was going to sing and 20 minutes later I was crying and didn't really remember what I did," she said.

When her family initially heard the song, things were a bit difficult. "My mum cried for four days when she heard [the song]," Pink revealed to Entertainment Weekly. "I've seen my dad cry three times and that was one of them; that was awful."

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Pink went on to explain how the song even made her step-mum cry. "That was a song I wrote for me," she said, "and I didn't realise how much it was going to hurt them."

Speaking candidly during the television special The Rise & Rise of Pink, the singer's mother said that following the release of the song they had many lengthy conversations. "To listen to that was very difficult," her mother said, while her father said it sounded like "a very sad little girl".

"I never realised until I listened to that song and listened to all the words just how much the divorce had affected her," Pink's mother said.

Ultimately, Pink says, the song made her relationships with both her parents better. "For us as a family, we used to sweep things under the rug and act like things were ok, and act like I didn't run away and I wasn't on drugs and it was all a dream," Pink said to VH1. "We opened up communications as a family and now, when we sit at the dinner table, we really ask each other how we are and we really answer and it's beautiful."

4. 'Who Knew' is a song that continues to change…

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Four albums into her career and Pink had found her stride. Joining up with noted hitmaker Max Martin, who was having a bit of a revival following Kelly Clarkson's anthem 'Since U Been Gone', and his then protégé Dr Luke, Pink decided to get personal again.

The second single lifted from her fourth album, I'm Not Dead, 'Who Knew', initially, didn't click with audiences in America. It was only after the success of masturbation banger 'U + Ur Hand' that the track was re-released.

Much like a lot of the Missundazstood, 'Who Knew' is a very personal track. Referring to her misspent youth, Pink explained how the song's themes were drawn from how out of control she was. "Some of my friends were selling crack, and I got into drugs," she told The Daily Mail. "I found a friend dead from a drug overdose when I was 14. He was a male friend, not a boyfriend. Most of the people at the funeral were just children. It should have been a wake-up call for me, but it wasn't."

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Expanding on this to MTV, the singer explained how, while the song is autobiographical, it also has a more metaphorical meaning, too, about the loss of a friend. "You're best friends forever, and then three years later you haven't seen each other in two years — what happened? You grow apart and people come in and out of your life for different reasons, seasons," she said.

"There's a couple different people mixed in," she added. "It's just the grieving process. You can look at somebody, he might be right there, and the next Monday he might not be."

During promotion for her first greatest hits album, Greatest Hits…So Far, Pink said that 'Who Knew' had become one of her favourite songs, explaining that how, over the years, the song had taken on a new meaning for her. "It's morphed," she said. "It continues to evolve."

5. 'Raise Your Glass' was a result of Pink's position in the music industry…

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The lead single from Pink's first greatest hits album, Greatest Hits…So Far, 'Raise Your Glass' doesn't necessarily hold the dark emotional weight of some of the singer's previous songs, but that doesn't mean it's any less meaningful.

"I had been on the road for two years," Pink told Alex James on In:Demand about writing the song,"and I hadn't written anything and I just wanted to write a song about underdogs."

Explaining how she wanted a song that would reflect her position in the music industry and how hard she had worked, the singer explained, "I kind of just hit the round and pounded the pavement – and became a touring artist".

"You don't have to be popular when you're a touring artist," she expanded, discussing her underdog status, "You just have to be good, and this is just a celebration and a thank you."

During an interview as part of a promotional video, the singer said that she also had the concept of a greatest hits album in mind when writing the track. "I want to write a song for my fans around the world. To me it's about being an underdog and celebrating imperfections, and celebrating the fact that we're dirty little freaks."

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During the recording of the song, Pink actually encouraged her husband, Cary Hart, to join her in the studio to do some screaming on the track. "He over came his shyness to be able to do that and it was painful," she said, laughing. "It was adorable. He was adorable. But he was really nervous to do it by himself so we all had to do it with him."

The song's video was allegedly a celebration of gay marriage and was, in fact, inspired by true events. "I threw my best friend's wedding in my backyard," she revealed. "She is gay and she married her wife, and it was absolutely beautiful. At the end of it her mum said, 'Why can't this be legal?' and started crying. It was just the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen, so that's why I'm doing it in my video."

Something about 'Raise Your Glass' obviously resonated with fans, as the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

6. Pink only got Nate Ruess involved with 'Just Give Me A Reason' by trickery…

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There was a point a few years ago where 'Just Give Me A Reason' was completely inescapable. Taken from Pink's most recent album, 2012's The Truth About Love, the track is a duet with Nate Ruess from the band fun.

Explaining the meaning behind the song during to Spotify, the singer explained how the track came out of a songwriting session with producer Jeff Bhasker and Nate Ruess. Almost as soon as the demo was finished, Pink knew that the song needed to be a conversation, whether that be between two girls, two guys, or a girl and a guy. "It needs the other perspective," she said.

"I find that there's always one person in the relationship that's feeling a lot more than the other person," Pink continued. "I feel like sometimes I'm like, 'The way you passed me the butter this morning, I kinda feel like we're going to be over in a month and we need to talk', and he's like, 'I just passed you the f**king butter, what are you talking about?'"

Pink went on to explain that she had to convince Nate that that's how the song should go. Initially, he was only going to demo the track as he wasn't sure he was into duets. "I totally tricked him into doing it and I'm so glad that I was able to," she said. "No one could have done it better and I think now he's very happy that he did it."

In fact, Nate Ruess said that it's practically impossible to argue with Pink when she gets something in her mind. "I went into it just obviously coming from a completely different world than where Pink is from," he recalled to MTV. "Writing the song was a whole different learning experience and was really fuelled by the fact that Alecia is so strong and independent and so very much herself. At the end of the day it's so hard to argue against her because what she does it always so great."

Producer Jeff Bhasker became involved with the song due to some record label meddling. However, after being introduced to Pink by RCA executive Peter Edge, he was on board. "[W]e just kind of did it in one day and got together and hammered it out," he told Billboard about the day the song was written. "It just kind of magically came together, and almost in an improvisational way. I started playing some chords and Nate just started singing, and [Pink] started typing down lyrics and we just kind of put the song together from there.

"It was an unusually collaborative and spontaneous song."

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