The rise of PinkPantheress and drum and bass inspired pop has been making the rounds on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram. The formula is simple: cutesy vocals telling a melancholic story, minimalistic, sped-up drum breaks and lo-fi synthesizers sounding like they came straight out of a PS2 game. Along with each track’s bite-sized run times, “to hell with it” seemed to perfect this formula. Given how infectious the album became on the internet, along with “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” with Ice Spice, PinkPantheress’s recently released project “Heaven knows” seemed like it should be a home run — and for the most part, it is.
“Mosquito” already showed promise, with its sweet mix of plucky guitars and ear worm of a chorus. While it seems like everything one would expect from a PinkPantheress record, its mix, structure and production value has shown a drastic shift, which is also true for the entirety of the project; every song now follows a conventional pop form, the lo-fi quality has been swapped out with industry standard mixing, and tracks are actually longer than two minutes.
This is not all being said to devalue this project, though. This progression in her sound actually works in her favor in many ways. The higher budget of “Heaven knows” provides newfound depth that wasn’t present in her earlier works, while still embracing a “y2k” aesthetic inspired by 2000s pop and electronic music. “Another life” kicks the album off with a heavenly arrangement of organs, which transitions into her signature sound of dreamy synth chords paired with breakneck drum and bass rhythms. On the latter half of the album, “Feelings” is filled with glimmering synth pads and in the same vein as bass-y pop beat in the same vein as Timbal- and’s “Give It To Me”.
With this new evolution in her music, she seems to be guiding the pop music industry into a new direction by combining her DIY-esque production with a glamorous budget. Whether you prefer lo-fi PinkPantheress or popstar PinkPantheress, you really can’t go wrong with either.
