The PinkPantheress effect is undeniable. I don’t think I’ve heard a single bad word about her… except maybe that we wish her songs were longer. In fact, when I sent the mixtape to my friend around midnight, the first thing he said was, “I’ve seen EPs longer than this.” But in to hell with it, PinkPantheress presents 10 tracks that, in my opinion, are full-length songs. And they’re pretty incredible ones at that.
I don’t think she needs an introduction, but if you haven’t caught wind of her yet, PinkPantheress is an English singer-songwriter and producer that blew up on TikTok with ‘Break It Off.’ Gaining notoriety for her soft, sweet singing over a drum n bass or garage beat, PinkPantheress rapidly developed an unmistakable signature sound, which she calls “new nostalgic.”
While PinkPantheress’ voice will make you instantly fall in love, each track on the tape deals with the opposite. Full of unfiltered words about heartbreak and all the pain that comes with it, the young musician knows how to hit exactly where it hurts. Her simple yet effective style of songwriting makes her tracks relatable to everyone. And while pop vocals over a DnB or UKG beat aren’t new exactly ideas (Jorja Smith x Preditah’s ‘On My Mind’ has been a crowd-pleaser for years), with PinkPantheress’ instantaneous lovability, it’s nice to see these dance music genres get the respect they rightly deserve from a global audience.
If you’d listen to my music and think, ‘No one’s done that before’, then it’s probably because of my melodies. Typically the people who sample garage are rappers, which is super cool; artists take modern songs and make them garage hits, like AJ Tracey’s ‘Ladbroke Grove’. I’m a big fan of that.
For me, what I want to do – because I’m super lazy – is to take a garage beat that I really, really like and chop it down a bit, make a loop out of it, and then sing on top of it. There’s no one in the UK that doesn’t like garage, so it’s that with a twist.
Pinkpantheress, NME
to hell with it includes six of the artist’s already released songs, including top hit ‘Break It Off’ as the project’s bonus track. But my friend wasn’t wrong—it is quite short. The project only rings in at 18 minutes and 36 seconds. ‘Nineteen’ is the longest track, hitting 2:33. But I’m not complaining.
The progression from ‘Reason’ to ‘All my friends know’ to ‘Nineteen’ stopped me in my tracks and made me want to write about this as soon as possible. People can argue and meme about Pinkpantheress’ previous singles seeming “unfinished”, but these three songs cohesively and comprehensively support her storytelling abilities in a way we haven’t formerly seen. I don’t want to credit it all to the length, though. Where the other seven tracks include two verses and sometimes a hook, ‘Reason,’ ‘All my friends know,’ and ‘Nineteen’ also encompasses lyrical choruses and bridges.
But just because that’s what I’m used to hearing in a song, it doesn’t necessarily mean the others aren’t “full-length tracks.” Maybe I’m just not aware of the criteria for what actually constitutes a song, but are rules about art really meant to be followed? I looked through her recent interviews and couldn’t find any answers on the swiftness of her tunes, but I will say it is an interesting commentary on the shortening attention span of our generation.
Whether you want to sit on that or not is up to you, but one thing you should do is listen to PinkPantheress’ to hell with it—out now on Parlophone Records.
