PinkPantheress: Fancy That review – sharp-minded bops hop across pop’s past and present

There’s thing telling astir the information that PinkPantheress launched the archetypal azygous from her 2nd mixtape with a video boasting that it was 2:57 long. “Ion [I don’t] wanna spot nary much opus magnitude jokes,” ran the caption accompanying a little video of her dancing to Tonight, a way that throws unneurotic a wide of philharmonic notation points: a illustration from US emo-rockers Panic! astatine the Disco stitched to a speedy four-to-the-floor location beat, a candy-sweet popular melody, a hefty bassline that suggests the power of UK store oregon drum’n’bass and a lyric that alludes to some Avril Lavigne’s Complicated and Kings of Leon’s Sex connected Fire.

The artwork for Fancy That.

Since the English singer-songwriter-producer archetypal came to nationalist attraction successful 2021, by posting snippets of the tracks she had made connected a laptop successful her halls of residence to TikTok, brevity has been her calling card: astir of the songs that caused her commercialized breakthrough lasted hardly 90 seconds; one, Attracted to You, was implicit and done successful 67. They garnered hundreds of millions of streams. Moreover, they were the archetypal steps connected an awesome commercialized ascent that’s progressive a large statement deal, a succession of golden and platinum awards, a spot connected the Barbie soundtrack and invitations from Olivia Rodrigo and Coldplay to enactment them connected tour. Perhaps inevitably, they besides attracted disapproval from radical who viewed her little arsenic a occurrence communicative than a symptom: wilfully insubstantial, attention-deficit euphony befitting an epoch successful which popular has mislaid its spot arsenic the basal substance of younker culture, an property erstwhile its superior relation is conscionable to burble concisely successful the inheritance of videos offering constitution tutorials and wellness tips.

There are decidedly points during Fancy That wherever you wonderment if PinkPantheress’s attack isn’t occasionally a small flimsy for its ain good, astir evidently connected Stars, which borrows from Just Jack’s 2007 pop-house deed Starz successful Their Eyes – a way she antecedently sampled connected Attracted to You – and features a childlike vocal that smacks of irksome affectation. But acold much often, you find yourself wondering whether her detractors’ criticisms mightiness person little to bash with her existent euphony than with sexism and snooty condescension. (If you privation to survey PinkPantheress’s main audience, cheque retired her 2022 Boiler Room appearance, which finds her performing surrounded by cameraphone-wielding teenage girls.)

Her bricolage attack to songwriting is reasonably evidently that of idiosyncratic raised with streaming’s decontextualised smorgasbord arsenic their superior root of music. You tin perceive it successful the mode she leaps from 1 root to another, unburdened by considerations of genre oregon longstanding notions of cool, similar idiosyncratic compiling a idiosyncratic playlist. Despite her tongue-in-cheek protestations astir Tonight, Fancy That has a little moving time, dispatching 9 tracks successful 20 minutes. But during that abbreviated spell, she pilfers from Underworld’s brainy electronica and 00s popular prima Jessica Simpson. She puts an obscure William Orbit way featuring vocals by the Sugababes adjacent to rapper Nardo Wick’s US trap deed Who Want Smoke? and Romeo by UK location duo Basement Jaxx, who person acted arsenic mentors to her.

There’s thing infectious and gleeful astir the mode she stitches unneurotic her disparate influences into the frantic, neon-hued Noises oregon Nice to Know You, but her existent accomplishment lies successful her quality to imprint her ain individuality connected the results: the songs connected Fancy That seldom consciousness similar the sum of their parts. For each she’s fond of lifting different people’s instantly recognisable hooks – Stateside steals from Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me – PinkPantheress is afloat equipped to trade earworm melodies of her own, arsenic connected the fizzy sweetener unreserved of Illegal. Regardless of whether it was calved retired of a tendency to pull an assemblage whose attraction span has been changeable by swiping, the succinctness of her songs seems little similar grounds of insubstantiality than of a crisp penning talent: determination are nary longueurs, small country for indulgence, thing extraneous.

It each hurtles by, truthful accelerated that you hardly announcement the unusual opus that doesn’t rather click, oregon that slips implicit the enactment that separates saccharine from saccharine. The euphony connected Fancy That feels simultaneously boiled down yet packed with ideas, fleeting but not lacking, acquainted but fresh, focused little connected making expansive statements than with immediacy and unforced fun: each perennially bully things for popular euphony to be. Clearly, PinkPantheress is simply a merchandise of the existent moment, with the accompanying interest astir what happens erstwhile the existent infinitesimal passes. But there’s thing oddly timeless astir her innate knowing of popular that suggests she mightiness beryllium fine.

This week Alexis listened to

Avalon Emerson/Storm Queen – On It Goes
A terrific reworking of Morgan Geist’s gospel-infused 2010s location anthem that drags it into a caller decade, giving it a caller futuristic, dancefloor-focused sheen.