As Charli XCX takes a U.S. victory lap and Afrobeats continue to reinvigorate r&b, it’s worth noting how pop music — traditionally, one of America’s mightiest exports — has been sounding a lot more interesting overseas.
More proof is Fancy That, the new mixtape by PinkPantheress, a.k.a. Victoria Beverley Walker. Like Charli, Walker is another powerful British artist of mixed heritage making music rooted in multicultural UK club styles. She certainly flexes her Britishness on Fancy That, from the colloquial-kitsch title to the jaunty way she rocks a royal crown in the cover shot. But she’s a cross-genre coalition-builder. After earlier collabs with Willow, Skrillex and Lil Uzi Vert, among others, PinkPantheress’ rewind of her own 2022 “Boy’s a Liar” enlisted another Yank, rapper Ice Spice, for a tag-team breakthrough that landed both women high up on the Billboard Hot 100. And of course, before all this, Walker launched her career with a viral TikTok teaser (“What A Waste”) built on a sly, if unauthorized, sample of Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall.”
That said, Fancy That draws much of its energy from UK sounds. Walker, who was born in 2001, has a fondness for turn-of-the century British bangers, and the sort of brazen sampling that made hip-hop and dance music so exciting back in the day. Walker sampled Adam F’s stylish drum’n’bass classic “Circles” on “Break It Off,” another early TikTok phenom that would anchor To Hell With It, her first mixtape. On Fancy That, it’s Basement Jaxx’s 2001 “Romeo” that serves as a centerpiece — the house-quaking disco-funk stomper gets flipped on “Girl Like Me,” with its delicious “let it all go!” hook lifted nearly intact. Jaxx DNA appears elsewhere on the mixtape, including an original track called “Romeo” that’s just faintly indebted to its namesake, though Jaxx-ers Felix Bexton and Simon Ratcliffe still get a co-write credit.
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Lyrically, the songs conjure romantic passion, fame, drugs, and the paranoia all the above can generate. Walker uses vocal processing to add or subtract emotional distance, just as most savvy young lovers do with their devices. And true to her moniker, PinkPantheress can get cartoony in a provocative way — the exact note and timbre of how she squeals “illegal!” on the song of the same name makes an adorable case for law-breaking. On “Tonight” and “Stars,” she sounds like she’s aiming to beat AI at its own game, plasticizing her voice like some Siri short-circuiting on vodka-and-Red Bulls. Sometimes things get trippier. “Noises” revolves around a pair of kids exclaiming “what the fuck is that?!” with quiet awe, while the lushly-curtained “Nice to Know” conjures another British hero, Kate Bush, with maybe a nod to FKA Twigs.
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Yet, as Fancy That chops up Jessica Simpson and Panic! at the Disco tracks and teams Walker up with “indie-sleaze” brat The Dare on “Stateside” (a pond-jumping romance narrative, natch), the 20-minute party shows PinkPantheress’ knack for collaboration in full bloom. The upshot is nine crispy song-nuggets that don’t overstay or overshare. The set also re-affirms that melting pot culture is often the tastiest culture, fitting for an artist who took her stage name from an American film starring a British actor playing a French detective. Long may she continue to mix it up.
