Day 32: PinkPantheress – to hell with it
Mixtape cover courtesy of Parlophone Records
I missed the PinkPantheress boom by being a bit too long in the tooth to have been on TikTok while she was blowing up. PinkPantheress, or Victoria Walker, had started making songs on GarageBand and posting them on SoundCloud. Then, in 2021 she started posting 20-second loops of snippets that she might want to develop into full songs on TikTok. She went viral and got signed on Parlophone pretty soon after, all because of songs she’d made in her bedroom.
PinkPantheress’ rise to fame is pretty much the quintessential Gen Z TikTok Cinderella story of social media launching someone into stratospheric fame due to people organically discovering their talent. From the beginning, PinkPantheress has had a unique sound, layering her angelic, breathy vocals on top of garage beats or drum’n’bass, creating something that’s very hard to place. I can definitely hear Imogen Heap influences in her songs, but it’s not like her music at all. If anything, it’s maybe like Frou Frou on speed.
I’d never listened to her breakout mixtape to hell with it, aside from hearing the obligatory snippets of the songs online — she’s such a viral phenomenon, they’ve been impossible to miss. For only 19 minutes, the mixtape packs a punch. It makes it easy to see why she was pretty much the biggest breakout star of the lockdown era. It also sparks joy that not only was she able to turn her viral clips into very, very good songs, but she’s also been able to grow into the potential that the mixtape showed. I listened to a bit of her newest one, Fancy That, and it’s exactly what you’d hope she’d be doing now: a more mature sound, leaning heavier into her musical influences while still sounding distinctly like her.
My very specific feeling that I get from her music is that I want it playing in the background of me doing a Mario Kart tournament, except I’m not playing Mario Kart, I’m in the car, I’m Princess Peach. While I’m zooming around, in the background, I’ll just hear PinkPantheress going, “yeah ʸᵉᵃʰ ʸᵉᵃʰ ʸᵉᵃʰ“. Bit niche, but you never know. Could happen.
to hell with it sounds like something from the early 2000s while also sounding incredibly current, suitable for the viral TikTok moments that propelled PinkPantheress into fame. It’s very cool, I like it. 8.5/10.