'90s Alt-Rock Icon Wrote Pink's 'Get the Party Started' as a Joke - and Madonna Turned It Down First
When Linda Perry sat down to write what would become one of the defining pop anthems of the early 2000s, she wasn't trying to launch a superstar. She was goofing around.
Perry, the former 4 Non Blondes frontwoman who went on to write hits for Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, and Alicia Keys, opened up in a recent interview with Elmo Lovanoon on his Go With Elmo Lovano show about the unlikely origin story behind Pink's career-defining single 'Get the Party Started.' The short version; she wrote it as a joke, offered it to Madonnafirst, got rejected, and then handed it to a stranger named Pink who had literally tracked down her phone number.
'I just wrote that as a joke,' Perry said in the interview. 'It was a total joke song.'
Perry had been curious about the glossy pop sounds she kept hearing on the radio and on MTV. An analog purist by training, she asked a producer friend to walk her through the gear everyone was using; a Triton keyboard, Roland expansion cards, an MPC drum machine. She bought the equipment, plugged it all in, and started experimenting. What came out was a pulsing, sample-driven beat she layered with bongos, bass, strings, a clavinet, guitar, and fake horns. Then she picked up a harmonica microphone and started free-associating.
'Just think of every cliché you can think of,' she recalled telling herself. The result was 'Get the Party Started.' She was laughing the whole time. 'I just wrote a [expletive] dance hit,' she remembered thinking. 'I'm blown away by how brilliant I am in my stupidity.'
Her first call wasn't to Pink. Perry had met Madonna at a club, worked up the nerve to introduce herself, and scored a contact to send the song to Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary. The reply came back quickly. 'This is not for Madonna.'
Around the same time, Perry received a cold call from a young singer who had gotten her number from a makeup artist's phone. The caller identified herself only as 'Pink, a name Perry didn't recognize. Then she happened to glance at MTV and saw a pink-haired woman in a motorcycle outfit. When the name flashed on screen, she called back.
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'I think you have the wrong Linda Perry,' Perry told her. 'I'm not hip at all.' Pink wasn't deterred. She confirmed Perry was the former 4 Non Blondes singer who wrote 'Dear Mr. President' and declared she had exactly the right person.
Perry brought the joke song to their first meeting almost as an afterthought. 'I don't even know what I would do with something like this,' she told Pink. 'It's not me at all. I'm never going to record this song.' Two days later, Pink called back. L.A. Reid had declared it the lead single.
The two went on to write 15 songs together, seven of which made the final album. The collaboration wasn't without friction. Perry says she was fired mid-project because Reid felt she was taking Pink too far from her existing sound. Perry didn't budge. She told Reid point-blank that Pink might lose her existing fanbase but would sell 10 million records. She was so confident she bet Pink's label head a Bentley.
Pink's Missundaztood, released in November 2001, sold somewhere between 12 and 13 million copies worldwide. Perry has been waiting on that Bentley ever since.
'Alicia Moore,' Perry said in the interview, addressing Pink by her birth name. 'You can send it to the studio house. It doesn't have to be the living house.'
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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 8:12 AM.