Thanks to TikTok’s infinite popularity, DIY musical artists can now take advantage of the platform to promote their own “homemade” music that might just lead them to stardom. PinkPantheress, a 20-year-old, British vocalist and producer, seems to be on that trajectory–and along the way she is proving that bedroom pop is the new pop with her 15-second audio clips circulating TikTok’s “For You” page.
Before gaining viral traction, PinkPantheress shared video clips capturing half her face, with her ethereal voice playing in the background. Fans, including myself, fixated on her music, rather than dissecting her identity. Her unique sound goes beyond the genre boundaries with a blend of House, Disco, Neo-soul, Lo-Fi, UK Garage, and Pop. PinkPantheress emerged from temporary anonymity with her long-anticipated debut mixtape “to hell with it” on Oct. 15. PinkPantheress’s mixtape consists of ten tracks, including viral TikTok songs “Pain”, “Just for Me”, and “Break It Off”.
The faceless, U.K-based artist became a viral sensation on Jan. 29, when she teased “Pain” with the video catching a glimpse of half her face and captioned: “day 11 of posting a song every day because I have nothing else to do.” In the “Pain” video, she sings: “It’s 8 o’clock in the morning / now I’m entering my bed / Had a few dreams about you / I can’t tell you what we did.” Listeners automatically fell in love with PinkPantheress’s down-to-earthiness of posting music snippets nonchalantly until someone notices, then becoming an overnight pop sensation.
The comments urged her to keep the Jan. 29 post and her fans demanded a full-length version on Spotify or Soundcloud. The video soon gained 1.9 million views and became the pinnacle of PinkPantheress’s career.
Nobody knew what she looked like or what her real name even was; Who the hell was PinkPantheress? PinkPantheress still has not fully embraced stardom and popularity. Even today she remains anonymous; people refer to her by her TikTok username “PinkPantheress” based on the cartoon character Pink Panther. Her TikTok profile picture depicts Buttercup from the kid’s cartoon Powerpuff Girls. She avoids oversharing on the internet to preserve her identity for the sake of privacy concerns.
PinkPantheress cultivated a nostalgic, underground sound that emphasizes 2000s ride-looped garage beat samples, and in itself comprises a variety of genres of music, including modern electronic dance music with a blend of House or Disco. Her sound is defined by percussive, shuffled rhythms with cymbals and snares. It has “2-step” rhythms at a rapid pace, almost imitating a heartbeat. She experiments with soundscapes and ad-libs, like the trademarked “Hey!” or “Yuh, Yuh, Yuh” in many of her songs. Her music becomes a dreamscape, with all the “la la las” in “Pain”, lulling listeners into tranquility. Her overall aesthetic derives from the “soft-grunge” Tumblr era of half a decade ago: style look fashion that captures knee-high socks and flannels with a dark palette and grainy filters on Instagram pictures.
But it is PinkPantheress’s nostalgic and “homemade” music style that attracts young listeners. The idea of a bedroom pop artist sharing “raw” music, made in GarageBand in their bedroom and not in a professional recording studio inspires listeners to participate in the music world without a professional production or a record label. All you need is a microphone and a functioning recording device–even your iPhone.
In an interview with Dazed in July, PinkPantheress described her sampling process: “I’m a fan of sampling and reworking original tracks’ instrumentals, so I used to just sing my own versions on top of these beats, and still often do.” She dedicated her early teenage years to singing over sped-up old-school garage beats that she found on Youtube. For instance, in “Pain” she sampled the UK garage music hit, Sweet Female Attitude’s “Flowers,” using the percussive beat and slowing it down for a sweet, “dreamscape” concept.
“To Hell With It” exceeded my expectations. It features hits lined up one after another. You cannot catch a break listening to this mixtape; every song chorus hooks you in. The album has no flaws, other than being 16 minutes long, but that is the PinkPantheress charm that belongs there. All of her songs have a timeframe of 1 to 2 minutes and latch onto every listener’s attention. There are no rules for listening to her music, other than humming the short, melancholic choruses and ad-libs and swaying your body to the looping beats.
The second track, “I Must Apologise,” first teased on TikTok in May 2021, is heavily beat-driven with PinkPatheress’ soft, cooing ASMR-like voice-over. She sampled Crystal Waters’ house music hit, Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless), and revealed on Genius Verified that “[she] was trying to stay away from a sample at this point, but [there was] something about this beat which drugged [her].” This track was produced by the talented Japanese-British singer Rina Sawayama and American singer and rapper Ashnikko.
The third track, “Last Valentines” depicts the aftermath of a rocky relationship, leading to a breakup. She describes an alternative universe, where she crashes her car into a tree and risks her life for her love interest to come back to her–but she is left alone on a gloomy Valentine’s Day. PinkPantheress sampled the guitar riffs from Linkin Park’s Forgotten from their seventh album, Hybrid Theory; as she shared with Genius: “This guitar in the back is amazing. I can’t believe no one’s ever sampled it before! I looped it, recorded it, mixed it, put it out.”
On another track, “Nineteen”, PinkPantheress steers away from her usual sound experiments and tries a slow ballad. She expresses feelings of isolation and boredom at the age of nineteen when she first released her music to the world, initiating the transition into her musical persona, while simultaneously combating emotional confusion and loss.
The seventh track, “all my friends know” is my favorite. I couldn’t stop bobbing my head to the Drake-like beat. The lines “say we’ll make up / why’d you say that? / why’d you break her?” was magic to my ears. Her willingness to try something outside her comfort zone, like a lower voice tone and a slower beat proves a musical versatility. This song is currently on repeat for me, the beat is so addictive!
If I were to hear PinkPantheress in a club, singing about teen angst and heartbreak, I wouldn’t hesitate to get up and dance. She could come out with a one-minute song right now and I’ll blast it through my headphones on loop. PinkPantheress is a force to not be reckoned with when it comes to sharing 15-second song snippets and automatically gaining one million listeners within the hour. I believe that she will inspire DIY musical artists to break free from the usage of professional music equipment and rather concentrate on music’s authenticity.
Check out PinkPantheress’s debut mixtape “To Hell With it” on Spotify! I compiled a Spotify playlist with the mixtape tracks and 2000s samples, feel free to tune in!
