To Hell With It

by PinkPantheress

Overview

Like many pop culture sensations around the turn of the 2020s, PinkPantheress quickly became famous thanks to video-focused social media service TikTok. Initially posting brief loops of songs she worked on after coming home from her classes for the day, the clips went viral, and her audience expanded further after she signed to Parlophone and began releasing singles. Calling her style "new nostalgic," her music borrows heavily from dance and pop music of the '90s and early 2000s, with the ecstatic surge of liquid drum'n'bass and the clipped, staccato beats of U.K. garage and 2-step driving many of her songs. Her intimate vocals disguise lyrics about loneliness, heartache, and desire in sugary melodies, helping them resonate in the same bittersweet manner as past U.K. dance hits like T2 and Jodie Aysha's 2007 smash "Heartbroken." There are parallels between PinkPantheress' style and some of the more dance-adjacent indie R&B artists of the 2010s, like Kelela and Abra, but her sincere lyrics and intricate melodies, which make the best of her limited vocal range, put her closer to the league of bedroom pop and the less-garish corners of the PC Music world. To Hell with It, PinkPantheress' debut mixtape, gathers most of her previously issued singles, several of which became charting pop hits in the U.K. and New Zealand. She even found success stateside, where U.K. garage and drum'n'bass are beloved by certain anglophiles, ravers, and music journalists, but largely remain obscure to the general public. The entire release clocks in at under 20 minutes, with the ten tracks initially feeling more like preview clips rather than full songs. The brisk tempos and urgent lyrics beg for repeated listens, however, and the mixtape quickly becomes addictive. Her interpolation of familiar but not overused samples (including the keyboards from Crystal Waters' "Gypsy Woman" and the Satie-mirroring chord sequence of Sweet Female Attitude's "Flowers") transcends clever gimmickry, and she brilliantly snakes her delicate voice around the kinetic, tightly wound beats in such an unforced, carefree way that there's still plenty of emotional weight to what she's saying. There's such a grin-inducing rush to the way her shouted "Hey!" or "Yeah!" ad libs echo from the speakers. The acoustic guitar-based "Just for Me" is a teenage confession of an intense crush set to a 2-step shuffle ("I'm obsessed with you in a way I can't believe/When you wipe your tears, do you wipe them just for me?"), and the drum'n'bass tracks, particularly the slamming "Noticed I Cried" and the sly "Break It Off" (based on Adam F's classic "Circles," originally released six years before PinkPantheress was born), match the exhilarating beats with direct lyrics that aim straight for the heart. A pair of mellower tracks near the end, the dembow-inspired "All My Friends Know" and the lush, string-laden "Nineteen," are more restrained yet just as considered and affectionate, pointing to a potential direction for an artist whose emergence was one of the most welcome left-field surprises of 2021. ~ Paul Simpson

Product Details

Release Date:	10/22/2021
Label:	Imports
UPC:	0190296455773
Rank:	33369

Album Credits

Performance Credits

PinkPantheress   Primary Artist,Vocals
Jkarri   Guitar
Dill   Keyboards
Kairos Laferme   Guitar,Keyboards,Synthesizer
Dill Aitchison   Drums,Keyboards,Synthesizer
Dom Munns   Guitar
Mura Masa   Drums,Keyboards
El Guincho   Vocals
Dan Munns   Guitar
Oscar Scheller   Bass,Drums,Keyboards,Synthesizer
Zach Nahome   Bass,Drums,Guitar,Keyboards
Powfu   Vocals

Technical Credits

Nia Archives   Remix Engineer
Finn Howells   Engineer,Mixing Engineer
PinkPantheress   Mixing,Composer,Engineer,Producer,Mastering
Jkarri   Mixing,Composer,Engineer,Producer
Kairos Laferme   Producer,Bass Programming
Dill Aitchison   Composer,Producer,Bass Programming
Tommy Gold   Remix Engineer
Surf Gang   Remix Engineer
2aab   Remix Engineer
O.J.C   Remix Engineer
Chester Bennington   Composer
Robert Bourdon   Composer
Crystal Waters   Composer
Brad Delson   Composer
Joseph Hahn   Composer
Mike Shinoda   Composer
Mura Masa   Engineer,Producer,Drum Programming
Jaycen Joshua   Remix Engineer
Martin Green   Composer
Adam F   Mixing,Engineer,Producer
El Guincho   Remix Engineer
Tomaz Di Cunto   Composer
Stuart Hawkes   Mastering
Mike Powell   Composer
David Farrell   Composer
Neal Conway   Composer
Adam Fenton   Composer
Cass Irvine   Mastering Engineer
Matt Colton   Mastering
Franz Buchholtz   Composer
Mark Wakefield   Composer
Sven Torstenson   Composer
Sango   Remix Engineer,Mastering Engineer
Flume   Remix Engineer
Jonny Breakwell   Mixing,Engineer
Oscar Scheller   Composer,Engineer,Producer,Drum Programming
FKJ   Remix Engineer
Alexander Crossan   Composer
Sam Gellaitry   Remix Engineer,Mastering Engineer
Jarreau Vandal   Remix Engineer
WondaGurl   Remix Engineer
Zach Nahome   Composer,Producer,Drum Programming
Izco   Mixing,Composer,Engineer,Producer
Powfu   Remix Engineer
Isaiah Faber   Composer
Evil Giane   Remix Engineer
Anz   Remix Engineer
LSDXOXO   Remix Engineer