Even if she had packed it in at the end of 2021, PinkPantheress would have been safe in the knowledge that she had remade a good swathe of pop’s underground in her own image. With just a few viral singles and one great mixtape, to hell with it, the 21-year-old Londoner supercharged TikTok’s drum’n’bass revival, spawned a legion of imitators, and reintroduced the influence of UK dance music to the U.S. charts. Her sweet, Lily-Allen-at-the-rave vocals were inescapable throughout last year’s summer festival season, with everyone from Four Tet to Floating Points dropping PinkPantheress edits in their sets.
All that buzz means that PinkPantheress, more than most viral stars, faces a treacherous path towards longevity and legitimacy. The hits on to hell with it followed a strong but easily replicable formula that other artists are already beating to death: Last year’s best PinkPantheress song wasn’t even a PinkPantheress song but “e-motions” by Mura Masa and Erika de Casier, which hit on just the right mix of 2-step beats, gentle harp plucks, familiar interpolations (in this case, Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”), and brokenhearted lyricism. PinkPantheress’ two standalone singles in 2022, meanwhile—April’s Willow duet “Where you are” and a Sam Gellaitry collab, “Picture in my mind,” from August—felt a little too similar to to hell with it and a little too anonymous, respectively, to make much of a dent. As with so many overnight sensations before her, year two has proven to be a test of PinkPantheress’s mettle.
But if things felt a little touch-and-go there for a second, Take me home—a zippy three-tracker released in the final weeks of 2022—confidently sets the record straight. If it doesn’t quite innovate on PinkPantheress’ initial formula, it still finds new angles on the artist herself. to hell with it dealt with boilerplate heartbreak; Take me home personalizes PinkPantheress’ music a little bit, adding shade and texture to what we know about the still largely anonymous producer.
Much of that work happens on the EP’s title track. Although she’s been heralded as a voice of Zoomer pop, “Take me home” is the first time that PinkPantheress has brought generational anxieties to the fore in the music itself. Over a brisk double-time beat, she sings about the malaise of getting older without really feeling like an adult—learning how to pay bills, trying to avoid social faux pas, and preparing “to be so young til the end of time.” It’s a deft analysis of Gen Z’s prospects: locked out of long-term financial security and staring down climate catastrophe, but required to participate in a broken world all the same. It’s the most vulnerable that PinkPantheress has ever sounded, but, musically, it’s also one of her weakest tracks: The generic 2010s dance-pop beat bears little of the lived-in warmth of her earlier music, and a dreary 40-second trap outro reveals why so many songs on to hell with it came in under two minutes. It lands without the grace of past hits, even as it signals artistic growth.
The other two songs on the EP fare better. On the sprightly dance-pop chimera “Boy’s a liar,” producer Mura Masa tacks a Jersey club beat onto Gorillaz-y chiptune. It’s one of PinkPantheress’ strongest tracks, and one of the first where she steps fully into the pop star role that she’s been trying on over the past year. It can sometimes feel as if PinkPantheress is absentmindedly singing over a song playing in the background, but on “Boy’s a liar,” she’s more active—as if she’s behind the wheel, rather than dissociating in the backseat. The same goes for “Do you miss me?,” a collaboration with Kaytranada that’s lightweight but nonetheless intriguing. Over the Canadian producer’s lush amapiano beat, PinkPantheress sings about discovering she’s the other woman and, eventually, making her peace: “I can be discreet/If you don’t want her seeing you/With me on your arm.” It’s a disarming narrative twist, and a welcome complication on an EP that sometimes feels emotionally thin.
All three songs on Take me home show flashes of brilliance, but only “Boy’s a liar” really holds its own against PinkPantheress’ most indelible hits. As a whole, though, the EP serves its purpose: Even if she spent much of 2022 seemingly unmoored from her debut style and without a specific new sound to pursue, Take me home confirms that PinkPantheress is striving not to retread old material—and that she’s still a cut above your run-of-the-mill viral star.
