I think Pink is severely underrated as a serious artist. This is a song that I find very moving and it evokes a feeling in me I can't quite place my finger on--it's something like tenderness, softness, plus some sadness. I'm still working out what this song means for me.
The song alternates between stanzas consisting of a series of questions (questions that are not fully happy, such as "Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone / Your whole life spent waiting on a ring to prove you're not alone*") and stanzas that seem designed to giving the listener the sense that
something is about to happen and urges the listener not to give up ("It's only half past the point of no return" suggests that no, all is not lost. You are on the verge of a life-changing moment. There is an undercurrent of sadness, perhaps disappointment or despair, present in the first two "question" stanzas is resolved in the last stanza of the song, wherein all the questions we, as listeners, are confronted with point to a decidedly happy moment ("Have you ever held you breath and asked yourself / Will it ever get better than tonight?") that all the struggle of the previous stanzas is building up to.
*I just want to note that I love the wordplay here--ring as in ringtone or wedding ring.
The title of the song, "Glitter In the Air" comes from the line "Have you ever thrown a fistful of glitter in the air?" I don't really understand this line. Glitter, to me, summons up images of innocence, magic, happiness, childhood, frivolity... To throw a fist full of glitter into the air is to look at the world through sparkly lenses for a brief
brief moment of time. Yet, once that moment passes, you will never get all the giltter back into your hands.
Anyway! those are my thoughts.
