Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
by Pink

Album: Beautiful Trauma (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Here, Pink focuses on the resilience of marginalized individuals, as she sings about strength in the face of bigotry.

    There's not enough rope to tie me down
    There's not enough tape to shut this mouth
    The stones you throw can make me bleed
    But I won't stop until we're free
    And wild hearts can't be broken
  • Pink originally wrote the piano ballad for film Suffragette, a 2015 British historical period drama about the movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom during the 1910s. She explained in her Apple Music documentary On the Record.

    "The movie is about the suffragette movement, which is women's right to vote. You have to fight for what's rightly yours which is rights and respect and love and kindness and compassion and you have to be willing to die for it. These women were."
  • The song took on a fresh resonance following its release as a single in January 2018. Many interpreted it as an empowering anthem for women as part of the Time's Up and MeToo campaigns, which fight against sexual abuse and harassment.
  • Pink wrote the song with Busbee, an American songwriter, record producer and musician from the San Francisco Bay area. His other credits include Timbaland featuring Katy Perry's "If We Ever Meet Again," Rascal Flatts' "Summer Nights" and Florida Georgia Line's "H.O.L.Y."
  • Pink performed the song at the 2018 Grammy Awards. Her previous turn at the ceremony was a spectacular aerial acrobatic rendition of her tune "Try" in 2014. This time Pink ditched the theatrics and sang solo in her stocking feet, a simple white top and a pair of jeans. She was accompanied onstage by an American Sign Language interpreter.
  • Filmed entirely in black and white, the sparse music video finds Pink clad in a white tank top and jeans, not dissimilar from her casual Grammys getup. Her 6-year-old daughter, Willow, makes appearances throughout the clip. The video was directed by Sasha Samsonova, who went on to helm Ciara's "Greatest Love."
  • Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken is also the title of a 1991 live-action Disney movie starring Gabrielle Anwar as a runaway who becomes a horse diver in the circus during the Great Depression.
  • This appears on Pink's seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, which was nominated for Best Pop Vocal album at the Grammy Awards in 2019.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Paul Williams

Paul WilliamsSongwriter Interviews

He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."

Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees

Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn YankeesSongwriter Interviews

Revisit the awesome glory of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees: cheesily-acted videos, catchy guitar licks, long hair, and lyrics that are just plain relatable.

Glen Ballard

Glen BallardSongwriter Interviews

Glen Ballard talks about co-writing and producing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill album, and his work with Dave Matthews, Aerosmith and Annie Lennox.

Randy Newman

Randy NewmanSongwriting Legends

Newman makes it look easy these days, but in this 1974 interview, he reveals the paranoia and pressures that made him yearn for his old 9-5 job.

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be GiantsSongwriter Interviews

Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.

Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike + The Mechanics)

Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike + The Mechanics)Songwriter Interviews

Mike Rutherford talks about the "Silent Running" storyline and "Land Of Confusion" in the age of Trump.