ALBUM REVIEW: Heaven Knows - PinkPantheress

Heaven Knows - PinkPantheress

“I am not your internet baby” PinkPantheress proclaims on her debut studio album, Heaven Knows. It’s repeated several times with startling clarity, especially for someone who’s been known to barely sing above a whisper. This statement acts as a purposeful reintroduction for the twenty-two-year-old TikTok breakout star, who seems more ready than ever to transcend and refute the pigeonholing she’s experienced throughout her short career.

It’s been a whirlwind year for PinkPantheress, who likely could’ve never imagined the critical and commercial success she’d achieve in such a short amount of time just two years ago when she was dropping her brief yet inventive and affecting musical creations from the confines of her dorm room at the University of the Arts London. She’s become a sort of Gen Z pop star archetype—a girl firmly planted in the digital world who smashes unlikely samples together to create danceable drum-and-bass-inflicted bangers filled with yearning that can accommodate our shortening attention spans.

Although Heaven Knows undoubtedly includes many of the ingredients that made her 2021 mixtape To Hell with It such a singular and memorable project in a crowded nostalgic pop landscape, this record decidedly embraces more high-definition pop production and song structures. Her voice also sounds brighter and more dynamic, which enables her once-obfuscated identity to come into greater focus. The songs here are longer and more fleshed out than her previous one-minute recordings, and they allow her myriad talents to flow more freely because of it.

“Mosquito,” the album’s lead single, is pure drum-and-bass and trip-hop bliss and features one of the catchiest hooks you’ll hear all year. Its lyrics, like those of “Internet Baby (Interlude)” and the sardonically buoyant “True Romance,” are preoccupied with the trappings of fame, viral attention, and fandom, and showcase the increasing breadth of PinkPantheress’s songwriting. Her remarks on twenty-first-century stardom feel welcome and original because of the cultural space she occupies—it’s easy for many of us to imagine just how terrifying and alienating it must be to go from performing in your bedroom to some of the world’s biggest stages in an instant. 

Not everything about Heaven Knows is sound—its guest appearances feel largely inconsequential, save for Ice Spice’s scene-stealing turn on the tacked-on bonus track “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2.” That song, while one of PinkPantheress’s best, feels incredibly out of place with its chiptune, cartoonish sound on an album that is generally immersed in dusky, moody soundscapes. These songs also mostly abandon PinkPantheress’s stellar ear for samples, and it’s hard not to miss the unlikely genius that made her early hits “Pain” and “Break It Off” immediately addictive.  

In spite of the tracklist’s lack of cohesiveness, everything really comes together on the album’s spiritual closer “Capable of Love,” which stands as the longest song in PinkPantheress’s discography at nearly four minutes, and is arguably her most ambitious. Her impassioned vocal delivery, backed by explosive drums and riotous electric guitar, extends far beyond the boundaries of her previous work. It indicates a growing talent who’s game to challenge herself and her sound for years to come.

- Chris Turino

RIYL: Magdalena Bay, Nia Archives, Take Van
Recommended Tracks: “Mosquito,” “Capable of Love,” “Feelings”
FCC: Clean, except track 13 (“Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2”)