The Rise of PinkPantheress: A TikTok Sensation Turned Popstar
By Mahir Ahmed, MA Global Media and Communications
Vicky Beverly Walker is a 21-year-old artist from Bath, England, who first began releasing her mainstream singles in 2021. Walker initially began uploading music on her TikTok account. Songs such as ‘Just a waste’ gained an immense amount of social media attention, with the clip receiving over 500,000 likes and thousands of views, making waves on the platform.
“The Bath artist has conquered TikTok with her garage-infused DIY pop”
The start of her career began in early 2021. Adopting the stage name PinkPantheress, she released two singles in January titled ‘Pain’ and ‘Attracted To You’. Both songs encapsulate garage and house beats with a mix of wistful bedroom pop ambience. Walker credits ‘Break It Off’ as the single that broke her into the mainstream.
Her debut mixtape, ‘To Hell With It’ has 10 songs and only an 18-minute run time. It was a short but creative body of work that allowed PinkPantheress to expand her creativity beyond viral TikTok hits. Along with ‘Break It Off’, ‘Pain’ and ‘Passion’, new tracks ‘I must apologise’ and ‘Just for me’ have racked up a combined 187 million streams on Spotify.
Throughout the project, she explores the garage/house beat theme, incorporating lots of kicks, snares, and occasional sound effects that mesh it all together. The British music press was quick to champion her mix of bedroom pop and underground dance music, with songs such as ‘Do you miss me?’ and ‘Boy’s a liar’ becoming fan favourites from her three-song EP Take Me Home.
Last year, she won the BBC’s previous “Sound Of…” poll in 2022, putting her in the company of past winners like Adele, Haim, and 50 Cent. She also gathered collaborations with the likes of Lil Uzi Vert, WILLOW, and Baby Keem, among many others.
Her success shows that the solo tracks and small EPs are getting the job done for streams and rising popularity. She has quickly become a breakthrough artist and pop celebrity in the making. Recently, Walker released ‘Boy’s a liar Pt. 2’ featuring Ice Spice, who performs a guest verse on the track, which has garnered much attention on social media.
PinkPantheress is definitely an artist to keep an eye on in the near future.
