Music heals — a truth Pink learned when she wrote "Who Knew" in 2006 to cope with the loss of her close friend as a teenager. In a Feb. 6 appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show," the singer opened up to Clarkson about the song's deeper meaning. "I lost several friends, unfortunately, to overdose, and the second one was very, very, very, very close to me, and I loved him very much," she said before singing the track with Clarkson as a duet.
"The thing about the song that I love now, after all these years, is that I never get tired of performing it, and it's taken on so many different meanings," Pink explained. The lyrics have retained their meaning, even for subjects she didn't initially write them for, such as her grandmother and her dog, but the stories have changed. Simply put, "I've lost people," she said. "So it's always sort of fresh in my heart."
These emotions became palpable when Pink sang with Clarkson, and the two joined in a heartfelt rendition of the pop song. Clarkson let Pink take the lead on the song, as she harmonized to complement Pink's confident vocals. Together, they stripped the song down to its bones, creating a softer sound and using only an acoustic guitar as their accompaniment.
This duet is part of Clarkson's "Songs and Stories" segment, which Pink appeared in the hour-long episode on Feb. 6. They discussed the meaning of Pink's lyrics from some of her most popular songs and performed together. A few days prior, they shared a snippet from their soulful duet of Pink's more recent hit, "What About Us." This time, emotions were running at an all-time high, and according to Pink, that's the beauty of it. "I need music to help me to my feelings," she said. "I can numb down really easy."
Watch the emotional video above and see why this is the song that Pink never gets sick of performing.