“My name is Pink, and I’m really glad to meet you.” Those are the first words you hear on PinkPantheress’s new mixtape, Fancy That—though you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d been introduced already. Since bursting onto the internet with her UK garage and jungle-infused SoundCloud tracks back in 2021, the 24-year-old has blossomed from a faceless bedroom producer to one of Britain’s most exciting next-gen pop stars. Her breakout hit, 2022’s cheeky kiss-off “Boy’s a Liar,” shot to number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while her accomplished 2023 debut album, Heaven Knows, served as a genre-bending rollercoaster ride through various corners of dance music, artfully paired with the musician’s candyfloss vocals and lyrics that charted the emotional topography of young love—with a dash of winking British humor.
Except, as PinkPantheress explains over Zoom from New York a few days before the mixtape’s release, she’s never really seen herself as a pop star. “I’m not looking for stardom,” she says, her long French-tipped nails flicking back her fringe. “I don’t think that I fit that role, and I also don’t think I can handle it.” Last year, as her stratospheric rise to popularity was peaking—she’d just won the Billboard Women in Music award for producer of the year, and been announced as a tour opener for both Olivia Rodrigo and Coldplay—she made the difficult decision to reel things back. “I needed just to remedy myself a bit, and help myself feel better,” she says of pulling out of the tour dates and stepping away from the spotlight. It didn’t take long, however, for the urge to make music to return. “I ended up taking that break to home in on a specific sound,” she says. “That’s why I’m more excited, I’d say, about this release—because it’s way more specific and way more in tune with what I wanted for myself.”
So, on Fancy That, PinkPantheress is reintroducing herself. Not as an entirely different musician, exactly, but as PinkPantheress 2.0—a little more refined, and a lot more certain of who she is. And it’s certainly an impressive leveling up from her (already excellent) debut album. Over the course of the mixtape’s nine tracks, PinkPantheress cycles through a head-spinning grab bag of references mined from the ’90s and 2000s: the Underworld-sampling opener “Illegal,” whose saucy double entendres could either refer to a secret romance or a beloved new drug dealer; the eerie “Nice to Know You,” which samples William Orbit to create a deliciously strange hybrid of Burial and the Sugababes; or the superb album closer “Romeo,” on which trip-hop rhythms are paired with exhilarating orchestral strings straight out of a Basement Jaxx house banger. (It turns out the duo behind Basement Jaxx spent a couple of sessions in the studio with PinkPantheress, and she also samples their track “Romeo” on “Girl Like Me.”)
That’s without even mentioning the one-two punch of the mixtape’s two singles: “Stateside,” which puts a Gen Z twist on Estelle’s “American Boy” with squelchy synths and clattering drums (the track was co-produced by The Dare, who shares PinkPantheress’s instinct for a pitch-perfect throwback), and the exuberant “Tonight,” which boasts one of the most addictive choruses in recent memory. “When I made ‘Tonight,’ I felt like I kind of figured out what I was trying to do here,” she says. Indeed, the album’s sound somehow fuses all these references together without feeling chaotic, or like pastiche. “I wanted to strike a balance between sounding more polished and mature, but still sounding like me, and still with a lot of that UK influence,” she adds.
It’s surprising, then, to learn of the immense self-doubt she had to overcome to get here—and to trust her skills (as a producer, in particular) more fully. “I never really had that much faith in myself,” she says. “Even when I won the Billboard Women in Music Award, which was one of the best moments of my life, I felt very unworthy. I produced all of my first EP, but a lot of the criticism I got on that project was about the production, so I thought to myself, ‘Well, okay, clearly I need to bring all these people in,’ and so I did [on Heaven Knows]. I love the album still, but for this one, I wanted it to be a mix of the two. I wanted to have the raw DIY production of my first project and then with a bit more finesse that came with my second one, but still me. I enjoyed the process of trusting myself more, basically.”
One of the most commented-upon aspects of PinkPantheress’s songwriting, after all, is the length of her tracks, which—at least on her breakout EP—rarely ran for longer than two minutes. While some have (unfairly) interpreted this as catering to TikTok-era attention spans, or a cynical attempt to game higher stats on Spotify through repeat listens, for PinkPantheress, it was always just the way she wrote. “I’ll be honest, when it comes to the song-length thing, I’ve never felt that strongly about it either way,” she says. “I didn’t really take it into consideration until it started being pointed out so much. And I don’t think [short songs] are a bad thing. Some of my fans want longer songs, and of course I want to satisfy them, but I also think when you let fans control too much of your output, it’s a slippery slope. So I didn’t change my mindset.” The fact that the songs on Fancy That largely adhere to the length of a standard pop track was a happy accident—each one feels cleverly calibrated to hold your attention without overstaying its welcome. “It just ended up that these songs were a bit longer, I guess because of the dance influence, and a lot of dance tracks having long breakdowns, which I wanted to pay homage to,” she notes.
The other aspect of her creative identity that has always got people talking? Her delightfully low-key style: a nostalgic ode to Y2K dressing that prominently features wrap cardigans, shoulder bags, and that classic going-out fashion formula of “jeans and a nice top.” It’s equal parts girl you knew from your hometown high street and—as some fans have affectionately observed—department store floor manager. (Fashion writer Rian Phin astutely termed PinkPantheress’s more authentic Y2K look—as opposed to the glitzy, high-octane version that has dominated the runways over the past few years—as “the true-thousands.”)
For her Fancy That era, she wanted to stay true to that spirit, and reflect how she really wears clothes in her daily life. “I actually think I dress very normal—I just don’t dress in a way that people think a pop star should dress,” she says. “One thing about me is I don’t do glam. I don’t know how to do glam. I don’t look good in a long dress or anything skimpy, and I don’t feel comfortable in anything sexier. I just haven’t realized that in myself yet—I think I’ll get there, but I’m still growing. So pretty much everything you see me wear is what I wear all the time.” Including, she explains, the tartan pattern that recurs across the mixtape’s visuals—and which, true to form, she’s wearing on a tank top when we speak. “Aesthetically, I led with that pattern, which ended up leading into some other British motifs—you’ve got some telephone boxes here and tea parties. The real word, I’d say, is kitsch. I tried to make it as kitsch as possible.”
Just take the video for “Tonight,” which sees PinkPantheress cavort through a stately home in a Marie Antoinette-worthy ruffled gown and stacks of pearls, the ringleader of a raucous house party—she describes it, accurately, as Bridgerton meets Skins. “I’ve just always really wanted to dress up like that,” she says, laughing. She also notes that the song and the video reflect the more self-assured state of mind she’s in now. “I’ve written so many songs about love, but a lot of them in the past have been from a mindset where the ball is in the other person’s court and I’m the one left in the lurch. Whereas with this one, I wanted to be like, No, I’m the one in control. You need to come to talk to me.”
Part of that newfound self-possession, it seems, is a result of having had the time last year to meditate on what she wanted from her career. One important goal? To show other young women—and especially young women of color—that they, too, can forge a career in electronic music. “The only woman of color I remember really seeing [doing that] was M.I.A.” she recalls. “There wasn’t really anyone at a very high level I could look at and say, oh, this is an alternative electronic woman who’s Black or biracial, and is also being recognized as such, and not boxed into this R&B category or boxed into a powerhouse soul vocal category. I think we’re set to this extremely high standard when it comes to genre and what we should stick to.”
Earlier that day, on the street in New York City, a teenage fan had come up to PinkPantheress and told her she was the reason she started producing. “I know it sounds cliché, but I do want to represent for those girls. Who want to do what I do and don’t feel like they need to feel pressured to be able to be perfect at dancing, look amazing all the time, have a curvaceous build, dress a certain way, have your wigs look amazing all the time…”
She pauses, before breaking into a glowing smile. “That’s why I want this project to reach new heights—because I want to be here for the alt girls who like me.” She may be a reluctant pop star, but that’s exactly what makes her one of the most interesting ones we have.
