Anonymity & New Nostalgia: PinkPantheress
It’s no surprise that Tik Tok has had a huge impact on the music industry within the last year. Most songs that have charted in 2020 owe some, if not most, of their success to the app due to its sampling audio feature. However, trending audios are not always produced by the big artists. Tik Tok has become a space for up and coming artists to test their music out, especially work that isn't complete yet. Amongst this huge crowd of new artists, is PinkPantheress, who blew up on the app after releasing samples of unfinished songs which would later become her debut singles - “Break It Off” and “Pain”.
By releasing only unfinished samples for a year on TikTok before officially debuting on music streaming platforms, PinkPantheress was able to garner a fanbase demanding to hear more, to know more. Her catchy songs are made mainly by using samples of other songs from the UK garage, DnB, and pop scene layered over by her sweet soothing voice. She puts her own twist on each sample she uses by either slowing it down or changing the pitch to reveal a different vibe within an already existing sound. Inspired by the 90s and early 2000s era of garage music, PinkPantheress has created a new genre that she calls “new nostalgia”.
PinkPantheress herself claims that she doesn’t feel the same sense of nostalgia that others feel when listening to her own music. In an interview with NPR, PinkPantheress said that she understands the samples she uses in her songs from the 90s and 2000s have a nostalgic sound,, but for the British native, UK garage music comes naturally to her and is ingrained in her. She knows her music isn’t necessarily new, but rather a reworked version of her favorite genres, where you hear a lot of different things at once. To PinkPantheress, her music “only scratches the surface of what real DnB is” (Sundaresan, NPR).
While sampling music isn’t anything new, there’s something about the way PinkPantheress does it that strikes a chord with people. Perhaps it's because the first few songs that went viral were produced right in her university dorm. There’s a certain authenticity and simplicity that comes with a well produced self-made track without having any “proper” resources or education. Rather, her songs are a concoction of her favorite artists that mirror a time where music was “unpolished and gritty and experimental” and “didn’t set out to impress everyone but still ended up impressing everyone because of how good it is” (Martin, Dazed Digital). PinkPantheress has even reached out to many of the artists she’s sampled like Adam F. and Just Jack to get their input on how she used their music to inspire hers. Her intention was to just see what else she could do differently with songs she loved. Her songs are like little homages to the artists she grew up listening to, which is what separates her from other TikTok artists who just slap Y2K on whatever they make.
Though it’s not her sampling that sets her apart from different artists. One of the things that has made her popular is the length of her songs. Not a single one of her songs goes over the 3 minute mark. In fact, her debut mixtape, “to hell with it” is only 18 minutes long. Her initial process of writing these songs came from a challenge she gave to herself; release 20 song samples to TikTok every day. Stemming from her goal to gain a large audience on TikTok and her impatience to do so, PinkPantheress used this challenge to create loops, many with the potential of developing into longer tracks. Those that eventually went viral did become longer tracks, but not that much longer. Her reasoning for the length of her songs is that PinkPantheress tries to jampack as much as she can within the length of her beats. Personally, she says she gets tired of hearing the same melodies over and over again, so instead of sticking to one or two in a 3 minute song, she’ll end up doing 3 or 4 melodies in a 1 to 2 minute song. In terms of songwriting, she just writes what she feels like she needs to, in order to avoid any awkwardness or unnecessary repetition. For some this may seem lazy or rushed, but in my opinion, this method works well for her. By not overpowering her songs with lyrics, she lets the beats breathe, you get to hear what she’s trying to unpack with the reworked samples. Her melodies are constantly switching up so you’re never bored and are so catchy you’re almost caught off guard when you realize they’ve finished, leaving you wanting more. Since half of the songs on the mixtape were written, produced and recorded solely by PinkPantheress herself and the other half were professionally produced in a studio, each song feels so different from the last, but are tied together in such a way that’s both fun and warm but also gloomy and raw.
In addition to her music, what sets PinkPantheress apart from the other artists on TikTok is her identity, or lack thereof, I should say. So far all we know about the singer is that she was born in Bath, England and raised in Kent to a Kenyan mother and English father and currently attends the University of Arts London for film. Her real name is still unknown and her actual age is a mystery as many articles released earlier this year have stated that she was born in 2001 and currently 20 years old, however on her own website, PinkPantheress claims she is a Sagittarius so she may still be 19. She began writing songs at 17 and has recently signed with record labels Elektra and Parlophone. She never released many pictures or videos of her face until this year, despite creating her TikTok account in 2020. Gaining popularity on an app that has thrived off the act of oversharing, PinkPantheress’s anonymity sets her apart from the crowd. For her, the music comes first, then her face, while other TikTok stars who have pursued music have done the opposite. Her lack of internet presence, despite picking it to jump start her career, creates the same effect her music does; it leaves wanting more. Her music is intimate, but she seems out of reach, in a good way. Sometimes, we forget artists are still people. Their fame doesn’t mean they owe us anything, especially access to their personal life. Honestly, considering the talent and success she’s had with “to hell with it”, she doesn’t need to overshare, her music speaks for itself, and I can’t wait to hear what she’s dropping next.
“to hell with it” is available on Spotify and Apple Music.
PinkPantheress’s Y2K inspired website: http://www.pantheress.pink/
