PinkPantheress on chart success and hearing loss: ‘I did my mourning already’

Last June, Pink Panteles canceled a performance at Spain’s Primavera Festival due to “partial hearing loss.”

But by October, the 21-year-old posted that she had lost 80% of her hearing in her right ear from years of exposure to loud music.

Hearing loss is devastating for any musician, but Pink Panteles is now philosophical about her condition, speaking to the BBC from Los Angeles.

“Frankly, it’s getting harder to make music,” she says. “But honestly, I’ve already mourned everything. It’s like, I really did it.”

The deterioration “was gradual,” she explains. “I told myself, no matter what happens, you still have another pair of good ears. As long as you protect them, you’ll be fine.

“So I try not to think about it.”

Instead, PinkPantheress is looking forward.

After rising to prominence with a string of underground EPs and mixtapes, she scored her first Top 10 hit with the vibrate, candy-spun single “Boy’s A Liar, Pt 2.”

In the US, the track reached number 3 on the Hot 100. Back at her home, it’s only her sales of 1,200 that separate her from her current number one, Miley Cyrus’ flowers. “I didn’t understand it,” she exclaims.

The singer already has plans to celebrate if she can take Cyrus’ spot when the new charts come out on Friday.

“Hey, we’re going to the theme park!” she declares. “I want to go quickly!”

Brief backstory. Born in Bath and raised in Kent, the Pink Pantherless posted his first song Just A Waste on his TikTok for Christmas 2020, which samples Michael His Jackson.

Over the next 18 months, she made headlines by sharing 15-second snippets of her work in progress, embodying songs that captured the attention of her fans.

An enigma, she obscured her face in the video and hid it behind a pseudonym she uses to this day (the name given to her on the internet and in which her songs are credited). is also said to be an invention).

Secrecy only added to the appeal, and in August 2021, she went viral with her British return to the garage, Just For Me, introducing many of TikTok’s US users to the genre.

Soon signed to Parlophone, she released her debut mixtape that fall. True to her TikTok roots, her 10 tracks of her teenage heartbreak were recorded in just her 19 minutes. Yet it contained as many melodic ideas and sonic inventions as some artists have achieved on a double album.

After winning the BBC’s Sound of 2022, she ditched elements of anonymity and embarked on what she calls a ‘step-up year’, taking her songwriting and production to a new level.

It culminated in November’s Take Me Home EP, featuring Boy’s A Liar’s original solo version for the first time.

Written with her frequent collaborator Mura Masa, the song was crafted in the same fashion as her breakout single, with Pink Pantherless singing over an existing track.

“I’ve been sitting on this beat for years, thinking what’s going to work,” she says. , once I understood it, I immediately understood it.”

In a twisted way, it’s a song about sexist objectification that inspires confidence.

“you only want to hold me when i see enough’” she sings dejectedly in the opening verse, after which she realizes she deserves more than the male gaze.

“You’re not looking at me, boy I have enough I have enough“

“It wasn’t based on anything specific,” says the singer. “It was just lyrics.

“And oddly enough, after this song came out, it felt like there was actually something about it.”

“It’s like all of a sudden I started to realize that the boys were lying to me,” she laughs. “But I decided to keep them alive.”

After hinting at the song on social media, fan reaction suggested it would be the EP’s breakout single.

To date, it has generated over 2.3 million TikTok creations and 225 million audio streams.

“It wasn’t surprising that I was like, ‘OMG, I’m not ready,'” she says bluntly. “I’m taking it at my own pace.”

The song reached new heights in January when he messaged rising MC Ice Spice from the Bronx and asked him to participate in a remix.

“The whole idea was that we didn’t want it to just be a bygone song. Culturally, we wanted this song to stamp itself into the year.”

Ice Spice’s poem expands on the original and tells her own story of her running boyfriend.

“I haven’t heard many female rappers in particular rap about their insecurities,” agrees The Pink Pantherless.

“I didn’t ask her… [that verse] It overflowed her more easily than we thought.

“If you have the opportunity to start talking about it, you can unlock a lot.”

In the space of a year and a half, the PinkPantheress sound was born. 90’s and his 00’s samples. Bright instrumentals and sad lyrics – it’s become the musical aesthetic that defines TikTok.

She rejected the labels given to her, from “new nostalgia” to “drum ‘n’ bass revivalist,” and said her upcoming music would be “a variety of soundscapes” and “genres unfamiliar to hear from mainstream women.” ‘, he said.

The barriers women face in the music industry are topics that particularly inspire her. On her recent TikTok, she highlighted the fact that only 2.8% of her songs have female producers, commenting:

She says the problem is an industry dominated by men who, consciously or not, intimidate young female artists.

“When I was growing up, I knew it wasn’t going to be taken seriously, so I didn’t want to walk into certain rooms,” she says.

“When I walked into the studio, one was that no one looked like me, and two was that people didn’t pay much attention.

“That’s what puts [women] is off and what we should do to combat it is [just] Make music with other women.

“Making music with other women means you’re not in a position to feel inferior or that someone treats you differently because of your gender.

“And you build confidence.”

In terms of her own confidence, the past 18 months have been a big learning curve.

Her public persona, which emerged during the pandemic, is still a work in progress and she’s finding her feet as a live performer.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “Certainly. Certainly. Certainly. Certainly. surelyYeah, it was an evolution. ”

She says shooting music videos for Ice Spice helped. She said, “Sometimes she’s looking at her and thinking, ‘Okay, so why does she do this?

“It was like she was giving me advice.”

While Boy’s A Liar marked her mainstream crossover, she hasn’t abandoned her soft, soft approach to her music career.

“I definitely haven’t started plotting [an album]’ she says. I feel like this year has already been crazy and hectic, so I’m taking a little break. ”

And depending on Friday’s chart position, it could be a trip to the theme park.