Heaven Knows: PinkPantheress’ Sonic Portrait

By: Jaden Wilson

I’ve always thought of PinkPantheress’ music as a soft whisper to the heart. Her light, airy, and youthful voice, singing tunes of profound sadness on beats mixing alt-pop, garage, and breakcore, has always ignited a space in my mind where melancholy and blitheness can coexist. 

I’ve followed her since her early TikTok days when she would post little snippets of her hit songs like “Pain” and “Break it off,” and I was definitely in the comments begging for her to release the full version. PinkPantheress has always been like this: giving her listeners just a little bit at a time. She has always been an expert at engaging her audience while maintaining an air of mystery and consistently leaving listeners pining for any musical offering she had to give. But she slowly disposed of this approach with the release of her new debut album, Heaven knows. 

The opening song, “Another life,” featuring Nigerian rapper Rema, begins with an almost unnerving organ symphony – a tune that is most commonly played at funerals – which immediately made sense in relation to the following lyrics in the first verse:

 “Guess you died today? And I can't believe it. You lost your soul, you know that you can't start this.” 

The song refers to PinkPantheress’ acceptance of the death of love between her and a partner, in which she gives an “oh well” kind of shrug with the lyrics: “I guess I’ll see you in another life.” 

One of my favorite things about PinkPantheress’ music is that she incorporates so many different genres and never shies away from talking about her music inspirations. Her love of K-pop is reflected in “Another life” as she samples one of her favorite groups f(x)’s song, “Ice Cream,” by singing, “You melt up my body and all my heart.” The implementation of f(x)’s lyrics and Rema’s afrobeat touch was enough to engage me as a listener who indulges in all different types of music. 

When PinkPantheress released “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” featuring Ice Spice as the album’s first single earlier this year, she described it as a “silly internet moment,” probably not knowing that it would be one of the most infectious tracks of the year. PinkPantheress’ light and breezy voice, in contrast with Ice Spice’s punchy drill assertions, made for a cute and catchy club mantra. Ice Spice said it best when she said she collaborated with PinkPantheress because she “sounds like a mystical fairy.”

“Nice to meet you” featuring Central Cee was a collaboration that I didn’t expect at all, however, it’s my favorite on the album. The song produced by Cash Cobain includes direct lyrics against electronic flourishes reminiscent of the Y2K era:

“I pray that I’ll die before my baby, I’ll take a risk if anyone tries to touch my baby.” 

When Central Cee came in, I genuinely laughed. The song goes from PinkPantheress talking about being so in love to bars that couldn’t be more different:

“I woke up to my shawty crying I said, ‘Nah, I'm not being unfaithful, baby, and somehow she caught me lying.” 

The lyric correlation was nonexistent, however, the sounds of both artists meshed together incredibly well.

The album then goes into more somber songs like “Bury me” featuring Kelela and “Capable of love” – which is my favorite cut on the album. PinkPantheress uses “Bury me” as a mellow opportunity to sing in a way that shows off her vocals as she has to mesh well with Kelela’s smooth and velvety vocals – and she did just that. 

“Capable of love” is one of her longer songs, creating a different listening experience than most PinkPantheress fans are used to. Her vocal runs in the chorus, and the dismal lyrics like, “Right now I think you're the cause of my grief,” against the glitch-rock beat appeared to be PinkPantheress’ way of bringing a song to its full completion by expressing her newfound confidence in her musical concepts and abilities. 

To me, Heaven knows is PinkPantheress’ musical way of finally emerging from the corners of the club and inching a bit closer to the dancefloor. This album is the perfect introduction to PinkPantheress, however, it still leaves listeners with so many questions. She has sonically opened up to her fans, but the mystique is still present, as everyone still awaits what she will do next.