{"id":54428,"date":"2023-10-05T12:04:36","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T16:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2023\/10\/05\/pinkpantheress-on-transcending-tiktok-stardom\/"},"modified":"2023-10-05T12:04:36","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T16:04:36","slug":"pinkpantheress-on-transcending-tiktok-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2023\/10\/05\/pinkpantheress-on-transcending-tiktok-stardom\/","title":{"rendered":"PinkPantheress on Transcending TikTok\u00a0Stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t go on TikTok,\u201d says PinkPantheress<\/a><\/strong> when asked whom she pegs as future TikTok stars. It\u2019s surprising, to say the least. Few musicians have utilized the platform as expertly as she has over the past three years. What started out as a bet with a friend to prove she could crack its algorithm \u2014 \u201cI told her I could make a viral video if I wanted to. And then I did,\u201d she remembers \u2014 wound up launching what has turned out to be a fruitful career IRL.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOnce I figured out the algorithm, I was like, \u2018Well, surely this would be able to blow up the music, too,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she says. The 22-year-old English musician (who goes by various pseudonyms in lieu of her real name) is sitting in a midsize meeting room at the 1\u00a0Hotel in Brooklyn\u2019s DUMBO neighborhood, where the d\u00e9cor \u2014 black leather, bare metal and treated wood everywhere \u2014 is working hard to make nature feel modern, but she looks effortlessly cool in baggy denim and a comfortable tank top. She\u2019s polite and cordial, even though it\u2019s clear she would rather be doing anything but an interview. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well, I might as well just try and see what happens. And even if I don\u2019t get anyone listening to it, at least it\u2019s out there and not just stuck on my laptop.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe songs that were hiding out on her laptop quickly found an audience. Her brand of drum\u2019n\u2019bass-meets-\u201990s pop\/R&B tapped right into the heart of the zeitgeist, resonating with a generation of kids who don\u2019t know life before the internet, smartphones and social networks but are downright tickled by the idea of a more analog lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I posted my first song, people were commenting saying it was really good. And I saw people using the sound \u2014 like 200 uses in a day or something,\u201d PinkPantheress says. \u201cAt that point I was like, \u2018Wow, this is crazy.\u2019 Imagine you have a song that you didn\u2019t think anyone was going to listen to, to suddenly way more people than you expected listening to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"PinkPantheress<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tPinkPantheress\u00a0Talks Touring With Olivia Rodrigo: \u2018I Was Quite Nervous to Say\u00a0Yes\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\"PinkPantheress\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tUploaded three years ago on Christmas Day, the song was the Michael Jackson-sampling \u201cJust a Waste,\u201d and it showcased what has become her trademark style: throwing a disco ball drenched in despair into a blender to create something deceptively fun. But while PinkPantheress loves sampling, she\u2019s weary of relying on its easy pleasures. \u201cI always like to think that I\u2019m adding something to [the sample], which is, like, relevant enough that suddenly it\u2019s a new song. I just think too many songs these days are just an interpolation,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith hordes of new fans clamoring for more, PinkPantheress uploaded \u201cPain\u201d<\/a> in January 2021, a song that would have fit in perfectly with the Euro alt-pop invasion of the late 1990s. At only a minute and 39 seconds long, it\u2019s really more of a ditty than a song \u2014 but manages to perfectly convey forlorn teenage love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJust a Waste\u201d and \u201cPain\u201d showcased a young, gifted songwriter, one who could succinctly capture and clearly telegraph universal feelings to make listeners feel as if she might be reading their DMs. Early on, unrequited love dominated her music. The feeling of \u201chaving someone that you\u2019ve always wanted to see romantically but you\u2019ve never managed to be able to and stuff like that,\u201d she says. Now that she\u2019s getting more famous, though, her music may soon have a more optimistic glint. \u201cI guess the more I create music, the less I want to be stuck in that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in Bath, England, to a Black Kenyan mother and a white British father, PinkPantheress was raised in Kent with her older brother. She took to music at an early age, learning to play piano and forming a rock band with a few friends while in grammar school. She spent most of her free time watching music videos and interviews on YouTube. By the time she got to college, she started making electronic music and experimenting with musical software to create her own productions.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo try out her songs, she wrote and produced for her friend MaZz. \u201cI think, objectively, the songs were good songs,\u201d PinkPantheress says. \u201cShe was kind of the [voice] and face for my writing.\u201d But, like many talented songwriters, PinkPantheress soon \u201cwanted more control over how I sounded.\u201d She registered for SoundCloud under the name of her favorite Steve Martin movie and began uploading songs.<\/p>\n

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\"PinkPantheress\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNothing caught on \u2014 but when she took to TikTok in December 2020, seemingly overnight, she became an indie pop darling. \u201cPain\u201d broke onto the U.K. Singles chart in August 2021 and peaked at No.\u00a035. Later that year, she signed a deal with Parlophone and Elektra Records and released her first mixtape, To Hell With It<\/em>. As booking offers came in for PinkPantheress \u2014 who had yet to perform live \u2014 her management at Upclose took things slowly, opting for smaller shows that allowed her to build an audience rather than going for festival stages.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI remember my first few shows after my mixtape was out at the end of 2021 and [my management] were making me do rooms of like 100 people and 150 people,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe biggest room I did was probably 800. I remember thinking, \u2018Why are these rooms so small?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt has been superintentional,\u201d says Jesse Gassongo-Alexander, PinkPantheress\u2019 co-manager, when asked about helping her build a fan base after finding so much success online. \u201cIt was always a case of putting in the hard work and taking the slower route to build a foundation that is solid that\u2019s going to allow her to stay here for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer story resembles that of another young female artist who managed to parlay massive online success into real-world results: rapper Ice Spice. On paper, PinkPantheress and Ice Spice may seem like photo negatives of each other \u2014 one\u2019s a brash rapper from the Bronx who has no problem putting herself in the spotlight; the other\u2019s an introverted singer who prefers the solitary pursuit of songwriting to industry glad-handing \u2014 but to PinkPantheress, they\u2019re more alike than different. So much so that she offered Ice a spot on the remix to her hit song, \u201cBoy\u2019s a liar Pt.\u00a02,<\/a>\u201d earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel like I don\u2019t have that many peers that exist in a similar space to me,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about levels. I\u2019m talking about internet space. I think a lot of people see me as being this, like, internet cutesy teen-pop girl. I feel like she was one of the newcomers whom I got drawn to because, even though she does drill and rap, it still feels like she\u2019s in the same cutesy world to me. And she\u2019s Black too, and that was a big important part of it to me. I prefer to collaborate with other Black artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"PinkPantheress\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe song became an instant hit, her biggest so far, debuting at No.\u00a014 on the Billboard Hot\u00a0100<\/a> after going viral on TikTok. For many in the United States, \u201cBoy\u2019s a liar Pt.\u00a02\u201d was the first time they had heard PinkPantheress. It got her her first BET Award nominations (best collaboration, BET Her Award), landed her an MTV Video Music Awards nod (best new artist) and ultimately peaked at No.\u00a03.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany believe she\u2019s a lock for her first Grammy nomination thanks to the song \u2014 if she had to guess, probably for best pop duo\/group performance. She\u2019s taken aback and amused when told about the drama that has surrounded the Grammy Awards\u2019 classification of certain albums by Black artists \u2014 even more so when she learns how disappointed Justin Bieber was when his album Changes<\/em> got the nod for best pop vocal album instead of best R&B album.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut even without a Grammy nomination, she can count this year as an unequivocal success. In addition to her biggest single yet, she appeared on Barbie: The Album<\/em><\/a> \u2014 as good an \u201cI\u2019ve arrived\u201d moment as any. But still, even as her career explodes, it\u2019s surprising to hear that TikTok has taken a back seat.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t leave it behind. I still post on it,\u201d she says reassuringly. \u201cI love using it to post my own videos, but I do not watch videos on there. Because like a year ago, I would scroll and I\u2019d see too many TikToks about me. I was like, \u2018I can\u2019t do this anymore.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMakes sense. Her management team trusts her to make the best decisions for herself. \u201cI think she has shown how globally intelligent she is by being one of the earlier trendsetters,\u201d Gassongo-Alexander says. \u201cComing from TikTok and appealing to a wider audience and then knowing how to retain that wider audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHow does PinkPantheress plan to keep growing that audience? By keeping on keeping on, it seems. She\u2019s uninterested in sacrificing her core audience at the altar of pop stardom. Thankfully, her music is naturally easy on pop fan ears. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve realized is that my natural way of writing is more pop-friendly than anything,\u201d she says. \u201cSo even though the beats can be kind of alternative, I still write in a very standard structure. And I make sure all the lyrics are tangible. And because of that, I think that it has made the [music] that I\u2019m doing very accessible to mainstream audiences. But my biggest fear is having people hear me do a [song] and recognize that I\u2019m doing it for the wrong reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of <\/em>Billboard.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t go on TikTok,\u201d says PinkPantheress when asked whom she pegs as future TikTok stars. It\u2019s surprising, to say the least. Few musicians have utilized the platform as expertly as she has over the past three years. What started out as a bet with a friend to prove she could crack its algorithm \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}