PinkPantheress (born 18 April 2001) is an English singer and record producer. Her songs, which are frequently short in length and include samples of music from the 1990s and 2000s, span a number of genres, including bedroom pop, drum and bass, alt-pop, and 2-step garage.

In 2021, while attending university in London, she posted several songs to TikTok that went viral, including "Break It Off", and she subsequently signed to Parlophone and Elektra Records. Her singles "Just for Me" and "Pain" from her debut mixtape To Hell with It (2021) peaked in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart and were certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Her 2022 single "Boy's a Liar" reached number two in the UK, while its remix with American rapper Ice Spice became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three. She won BBC's Sound of 2022 poll.

Early life and education
PinkPantheress was born on 18 April 2001 in Bath, Somerset, to a Kenyan mother, who works as a carer, and a white English father, who works as a statistics professor. She has one older brother, who works as an audio engineer. When she was five years old, her family moved from Bath to Kent, where she grew up. Her father moved to the United States to work at a university in Austin, Texas when she was 12 years old, while she and her mother stayed in England.

She took piano lessons as a child, and, at age 12, sang "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King at a school talent show. When she was 14 years old, she became the lead singer in a rock band, which covered songs by My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and Green Day, and performed with them for the first time at a school fête. She began working at around age 13, taking jobs at Marks & Spencer, Claire's, and the Co-op as a teenager. She studied film at University of the Arts London until 2022, when she dropped out.

Career

2020–2021: Career beginnings and To Hell with It
PinkPantheress started writing music in high school to help a friend before eventually writing music on her own. At age 17, she began using GarageBand to produce instrumentals for her friend, fellow singer Mazz, and she later used GarageBand to record many of her early songs while lying down in her university hall late at night. She started uploading original songs of hers to SoundCloud, where they received little attention. After a video posted to her personal TikTok account in December 2020 received over 500,000 likes, she posted a snippet of her song "Just a Waste" as PinkPantheress later that month in the hopes of reaching a wider audience; the snippet soon went viral on the platform.

PinkPantheress's songs "Break It Off" and "Pain" went viral on TikTok in early 2021, with the latter peaking at number 35 on the UK Singles Chart in August of that year. She was signed to Parlophone in April 2021. In June 2021, she was featured on GoldLink's song "Evian" from his studio album Haram! and signed to Elektra Records. After a snippet of her song "Just for Me" gained attention on TikTok, she released it in August 2021, along with a music video co-directed by her released the following month. On the UK Singles Chart, it reached number 27, making it her highest entry on the UK Singles Chart at the time. It earned PinkPantheress nominations for an iHeartRadio Music Award, an Ivor Novello Award, and two NME Awards. In early October 2021, she announced the release date and title of her debut mixtape, To Hell with It, which was released on 15 October 2021 through Parlophone and Elektra Records and debuted at number 20 on the UK Albums Chart. The mixtape was preceded by "Pain", "Break It Off", and "Just for Me" as singles, as well as "Passion", released in February 2021, and "I Must Apologise", released in October 2021. PinkPantheress performed live for the first time in October and November 2021 in London.

2022–present: Sound of 2022 and upcoming debut album
In January 2022, PinkPantheress was announced as the winner of BBC's Sound of 2022 poll. That same month, she released a remix album for To Hell with It. She was nominated for the Brit Award for Song of the Year at the 42nd Brit Awards for "Obsessed With You" by Central Cee, which sampled her song "Just for Me", and gave a virtual performance on Roblox for the Brit Awards. She appeared on the song "Bbycakes" with Mura Masa, Lil Uzi Vert, and Shygirl in February 2022, and released her song "Where You Are" featuring Willow in April 2022.

In April 2022, PinkPantheress went on a European tour in support of To Hell with It. She was featured on "Tinkerbell is Overrated", a song from Beabadoobee's second album, Beatopia, released in July 2022. She performed as an opening act on Halsey's Love and Power Tour throughout the spring of 2022 on the American leg. In June 2022, she cancelled her scheduled appearance at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona due to hearing loss.

She released the single "Picture in My Mind" featuring Sam Gellaitry in August 2022. Her extended play Take Me Home was released in December 2022, featuring the singles "Boy's a Liar" and "Do You Miss Me", both released a month prior, and the title track. "Way Back", her collaborative single with Skrillex and Trippie Redd, was released in January 2023 and included on Skrillex's album Don't Get Too Close the following month. In February 2023, she released a remix of "Boy's a Liar", "Boy's a Liar Pt. 2", with American rapper Ice Spice. After becoming popular on TikTok, the remix debuted at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking her debut on the chart, and later peaked at number three. It also peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart, where it became her highest-charting single, and was nominated for two awards at the BET Awards 2023. "Angel", her addition to the soundtrack for the Greta Gerwig-directed 2023 film Barbie, was released as a single in June 2023.

Artistry

Influences

PinkPantheress's stage name was taken from her TikTok account of the same name, which was inspired by a question from the game show The Chase that asked "What is a female panther called?" and by The Pink Panther film series. PinkPantheress has listed My Chemical Romance, Lily Allen, Just Jack, Michael Jackson, Kaytranada, Imogen Heap, Frank Ocean, as inspirations, also citing K-pop songs, Blink-182, Good Charlotte, Green Day, early Panic! at the Disco, Linkin Park, and Frou Frou as inspirations for her melodies and beat choices. She has called Hayley Williams a "big influence" on her as a performer and said that she first wanted to become a professional musician when she was 14 years old after seeing Williams perform as part of Paramore during Reading Festival and that she is "doing music because of [Williams]". She has also stated that she was inspired by an interview with Doja Cat to pursue music as a career, and was inspired to post her songs on TikTok by Lil Nas X.

Musical style
PinkPantheress's music has been described as pop, bedroom pop, dance, alt-pop, drum and bass, 2-step, jungle, and hyperpop, and often uses samples of other songs, such as dance music from the 1990s and 2000s and jungle, funk, UK garage, and pop songs. PinkPantheress uses topline writing to write her songs, which are frequently self-produced and short in length. She has described her own music as alt-pop and "a form of D'n'B that's acceptable to listen to at home", and has stated that she writes "sadder", "dark" lyrics to "appeal to the youth", often to contrast them with her "happy instrumentals". PinkPantheress has said that her lyrics are usually not based on personal experiences, stating, "A lot of it just comes because I really like storytelling."

NPR's Vanessa Handy called breakbeat loops a "signature of [PinkPantheress's] work", while Kieran Press-Reynolds of Insider also wrote that her songs regularly have "fast-paced breakbeats" and "ASMR-like refrains". Rolling Stones Keegan Brady described PinkPantheress's music as "alt-girl rap" and wrote that she uses "confessional, almost treacly rap-singing" and "dated production technology" in her songs which "tap[s] into a deeply nostalgic sound that conjures the height of Nineties U.K. culture". DIYs Georgia Evans called her "DIY aesthetic that started as GarageBand experimentation" a signature of her music.

The Guardians Michael Cragg described PinkPantheress's vocals as "sweet but unsettling", while Jon Caramanica of The New York Times wrote that she "sounds like she's flirting and aching all at once." Cat Zhang of Pitchfork called PinkPantheress's voice "angelic", "girlish", and "slight" and wrote that she was "one of the rare TikTok artists whose internet fame seems proportional to their potential". Felicity Martin of Dazed called her lyrics "sad" and "wistful". Writing for Nylon, Steffanee Wang called her music "a collage of sounds that fell [sic] simultaneously dated and contemporary", adding that listening to it "feels like being on the internet before social media was a thing". Insiders Kieran Press-Reynolds wrote that PinkPantheress gave uptempo electronic music genres like drum and bass an "introspective, romantic bedroom sound" with her "hushed" vocals.

Personal life and public image
PinkPantheress has made efforts to keep her real name a secret. She has stated that she has had body dysmorphia  from a young age.  
She experienced gradual hearing loss from listening to loud music; she became 80 percent deaf in her right ear by 2022.

Discography

Mixtapes
 To Hell with It (2021)

Awards and nominations

References

External links
 

2001 births
Living people
21st-century Black British women singers
Bedroom pop musicians
British women record producers
Elektra Records artists
English drum and bass musicians
English women pop singers
English women singer-songwriters
English singer-songwriters
Alternative R&B musicians
English people of Kenyan descent
English record producers
Musicians from Bath, Somerset
Parlophone artists
Singers from London
UK garage singers
Electronic music singers
Deaf musicians
English deaf people