Pink says she's always been misunderstood, and that's something she's ready to embrace. She even decided to spell the title of her second album, Missundaztood, in a way that would keep people guessing.

"I say the wrong things," Pink said after a video shoot for "Get the Party Started," which hits radio next week. "I tell the truth, which tends to get me in trouble, and I'm a very eclectic person, so I feel that's misunderstood, as well."

She's hoping that Missundaztood, due November 20, shows people that she's more than just a dance-pop diva. "It's very different from the last one," she said, referring to her 2000 debut, Can't Take Me Home, and adding that the new album pulls more from her rock and hip-hop background. "It's a lot more versatile, it's a lot less contrived, it's a lot more me."

"Get the Party Started" is as danceable as anything from the last album, but the guitars are heavier and the 21-year-old singer stretches out vocally. "People probably don't know that when I was growing up I was the lead singer of two rock bands, and then I sang gospel at an all-black gospel church," she said. "I didn't believe there [were] any boundaries and I still don't."

Pink shot the video for the song in late September with David Meyers, who directed all the videos from Can't Take Me Home. It's a club video, but with a twist. "I felt like a lot of people have done the club thing, and that's fun," she said. "But the funnest part for me about going out is what happens before it. The getting ready, the calling your friends, the getting in the car, what happens in the gas station. That's usually more fun than the club turns out to be."

The album's not all fun and games, though. Co-producer Linda Perry (formerly of the band 4 Non Blondes) wrote "Lonely Girl" for Pink when the singer ended up in the hospital after an ulcer attack. "I was in a lot of pain, and I was curled up on the floor, and I left to go to the hospital and she wrote this song about me," she said. "It was probably the most touching thing that anyone's ever done for me because I kinda felt understood and it scared me."

Someone else who Pink felt understood her was Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, who met her at a radio station and told her she reminded him of late-'60s blues rocker Janis Joplin. "He just looked straight into my soul and we clicked," she said. They clicked so well that they wound up duetting on a ballad that Pink said sounds like, well, Janis Joplin.

"We're harmonizing together, and it was just an experience of a lifetime," she said, adding that she hopes to release the song as a single. A spokesperson for Pink's label, Arista, said that they haven't determined if the song will make the final track list for Missundaztood.

In the meantime, Pink is getting ready to audition a band for a possible tour this winter.