BottleRock headliner duets with 10-year-old daughter

Seeing Pitbull live in concert is exactly what you’d expect. Along with strutting around for an hour of aggressively-recognizable songs, “Mr. 305” offered generic inspirational platitudes like, “Why dream when you can live?” or “forget followers and like, you need to be leaders.” 

Pitbull has over 9 million followers on Instagram alone. 

One funny moment came when authorities momentarily halted the show for a medical emergency, just as Pitbull told the crowd that “nothing can stop us now.” Pit had to amend his lesson to “nothing but the police can stop us now,” accidentally stumbling into a politically pertinent comment. 

Headliner P!nk opened her show with the 2001 hit “Get the Party Started,” one of her most iconic singles that set the tone for the two hour-long set.

Early on, P!nk admitted that this was her first show of this size since before the pandemic. Her rustiness did show at points, with the singer either starting the wrong choreography or needing to ask her backup band if she was in the right key on a few different songs. But her obvious confidence on stage made those moments feel endearing, like getting to watch a closed rehearsal. 

P!nk’s versatility has powered her to a career lasting nearly 25 years, and that range was on display on Sunday as she mixed headbangers like “U and Ur Hand” with ballads like “What About Us.”

The highlight of the night came when P!nk brought out her daughter, 10-year-old Willow Sage Hart, on stage to help sing “Cover Me in Sunshine,” a song that debuted during worst of the pandemic.

According to P!nk, Willow wasn’t worried about singing in front of 40,000 people, but was anxious to know when she’d get to eat her Twizzlers. 

P!nk mixed in a number of songs from other female artists across decades and genres. Covers ranged from No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl,” to Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” to Joan Baez’s “Baby I’m Gonna Leave You,” to a booming version of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up.”

P!nk waited until her encore — 2008’s “So What” — to break out the aerials, a trademark of her live shows. BottleRock organizers could not have asked for a better image to close the festival than P!nk flying over the crowd belting out, “I am a rock star!”