If You Like PinkPantheress, Check Out…

By: Abena Oppon

PinkPantheress’ vocals may be soft, but her influences are anything but. The 22-year old first began making music on Garageband, posting her work onto SoundCloud, then to TikTok where she gained a following for her unique mixture of Drum and Bass, Garage, and Two-step. As of the time of writing, her most popular song and highest-charting single is ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’, a bouncy club tune featuring popular New York rapper Ice Spice; her name also appears on the soundtrack to ‘Barbie’. 

Despite her popular pop or club leaning songs, her main influences can be heard most clearly on tracks like ‘Just for Me’ and the ephemeral ‘Pain’, both of which are Two-Step Garage songs. ‘Take Me Home’, another truly PinkPanthress-esq track, contains pockets of Drum and Bass breakbeats.

UK Garage is a genre that emerged from New York Garage House in the 1990s, easily identified by its shuffled beats and laid-back vocals. Though Garage waned in popularity by the mid-2000s, it has undergone a resurgence in the pop music sphere as part of the revival of Y2K pop culture with Gen Z across all mediums. Sampling has been integral  to this — see both ‘Pain’, and the Rina Sawayama-Charli XCX collaboration ‘Beg For You’ — to the point where 1 in 4 songs on the UK charts sample an older track.

Two-step, on the other hand, is a distinctly British variant of Garage music, characterised by a two-step beat as opposed to a four-on-the-floor one. It is similar to modern Drum and Bass in this way, but instead at a slower tempo. They both rely on a specific syncopated drum pattern that is found in many commonly sampled beats, such as the Amen Break (sampled from ‘Amen, Brother’ by The Winstons). That being said, most Garage music does not directly rely on sampled drums. Many of these genres of music can bleed into each other, which makes PinkPantheress’ discography cohesive, but still varied. 

Though Drum and Bass also relies on these drum breaks, it speeds directly sampled drums up to tempos of around 160-180 BPM. Born of the genres Breakbeat and Jungle, Drum and Bass lays heavy emphasis on these sampled beats. While it emerged at a similar time as Garage, it has been ever present in the UK charts (in the form of its own several subgenres) thanks to acts such as Rudimental, DJ Fresh, and Sigala.

Many might object to the impact that TikTok has had on the music industry — myself included — but I can’t resent PinkPantheress for helping bring this style of music back into the mainstream. If you are a fan of her music, you might want to dive deeper into these genres, so I recommend the music of the following artists:

Craig David

It feels weird to have to describe who Craig David is. He feels, to me, like an ever-present musical and pop culture figure. Who he is, in numbers, is a two-time Grammy nominee, winner of three Ivor Novello Awards, and credit on 16 UK top ten singles. 

David began his career in 1999, providing vocals for Artful Dodger, (a UK Garage duo, most prominently on their song ‘Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)’. This paved the way for his solo career as he went on to release ‘7 Days’ and ‘Fill Me In’, arguably his most notable songs. Both songs feature the characteristic foundation of acoustic guitar riffs, perfect for fans of the PinkPantheress songs ‘Just for Me’ and ‘Passion’. These singles highlight David’s position as a noughties heartthrob ; ‘7 Days’ in particular paints him as some sort of sexual God who seduces his lover in six days, then rests on the seventh. 

Mis-Teeq

Alesha Dixon, one third of the girl group Mis-Teeq, inhabits a similar space as Craig David does in British pop culture, as she is known more for being a talent show judge and Eurovision host than a musician. However, as a young woman, she provided spirit and punch to their songs with her rap verses. Mis-Teeq — a name that is presumably a play on the word “mystique” — formed in 1997, and released their first single ‘Why?’ in 2001. 

Though ‘Why?’, was a Latin-inspired pop track in its original form, it garnered popularity within the garage scene with Matt Jam Lamont’s ‘UK Garage MC Radio Edit’. Their next single, ‘All I Want’, leaning more towards the genre of Speed Garage, is full of pep, fake brass, and fast bars. Speed Garage is a subgenre of Garage, produced at faster tempos and often at higher pitches. Their most popular song, however, is ‘Scandalous’, a stylish track with a string-led beat and layered harmonies similar to that of Destiny’s child. It also happens to be their only charting single in the US, as the theme to 2004’s ‘Catwoman’. ‘All I Want’ is livelier than many of PinkPantheress’ songs, and ‘Scandalous’ perhaps cooler, but they all exude the same kind of 2000s girl power.

NewJeans 

When speaking of exuding 2000s girl power, the up-and-coming K-pop group NewJeans can not be ignored. Debuting only last year in 2022, they have already found themselves with a dedicated global fanbase and a litany of hits. NewJeans hit the same genres as PinkPantheress, leaning even further into its bubblegum pop potential.

Members Minju, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein emerged industry-ready, as is typical of K-pop stars. Every appearance of theirs is sartorially unique, every step of choreography perfect and not a count out of time. While this differs from PinkPantheress’ girl-next-door, cobbled-together 00s style, they all share a charming, almost coy nature. Songs to check out would be the tongue-twisting ‘OMG’, bluesy ‘Attention’, and the bubbly ‘Super Shy’.

Nia Archives 

PinkPantheress, on the remix album of her debut To Hell With It, has previously collaborated with Nia Archives. ‘Nineteen — Nia Archives Remix’ takes the adolescent melancholy of being stuck in a changing hometown of the original, and injects it with urgency, as if it is imperative for her loneliness to be heard. 

If you enjoy the intensity of the beats on the ‘Nineteen’ remix, and on songs like ‘Take Me Home’ and ‘Notice I Cried’, Nia Archives is a good entry point to more songs of that kind. Her works vary from more mainstream Drum and Bass to very technical songs of the Jungle and Breakcore variety. Jungle is a parent genre of both Garage and Drum and Bass, and includes many more influences from Jamaican genres, like Dub and Ragga. On ‘Bad Gyalz’, Archives pays homage to her Jamaican heritage and the country’s musical contributions to the genre.

Alongside being a producer, she is a skilled and engaging DJ, and you can find many of her sets online, including her Boiler Room set from October 2022. She has a keen eye for remixes, having also remixed ‘Little Things’ by Jorja Smith, ‘Heads Will Roll’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (as ‘Off Wiv Ya Headz’ and ‘Baianá’ by Barbatuques.