PinkPantheress is the stage name of Vicky Beverly Walker, an English singer, songwriter, and record producer. She is known for her blend of bedroom pop, drum and bass, alt-pop, and 2-step garage, often incorporating samples of music from the 1990s and 2000s.
A combination of her favorite film, The Pink Panther, and a question from the British game show The Chase inspired PinkPantheress's stage name.
In an interview with the BBC, PinkPantheress explained that she was deciding on a TikTok username and came across a clip of The Chase where host Bradley Walsh asked a contestant what a female panther was called. The answer, "pantheress," caught her attention, and she decided to use it as her username. Later, she added "pink" in front of it to make it unique.
Born in Bath, England, PinkPantheress moved to Kent at 5 with her mother, a carer of Kenyan heritage, and her English father, a statistics professor. Her dad relocated to work at a university in Austin, Texas, meaning her parents' marriage morphed into a long-distance relationship.
After moving to an all-girls school, she fronted an emo and pop punk band, covering My Chemical Romance songs and taking inspiration from Paramore's Hayley Williams. They made their debut performance at a school fete.
"I had jeggings on and cut a hole in the knee to look more emo,"
PinkPantheress told The Guardian. "I'm a really nervous performer now, but I remember not caring about who was watching and how many people. I left the stage thinking I killed it, even though I was super off-key. I was too young to be nervous. Hopefully, I'll get back to that point."
Her sound engineer brother played a pivotal role in shaping her musical tastes. PinkPantheress was curious about his experimental music and, inspired, started making her own tunes at 17. She used GarageBand to make songs with her voice and fast jungle and garage beats from YouTube and her DJ and skater friends.
PinkPantheress wanted to be a musician, but her SoundCloud songs didn't get many plays, so she moved to London to study film at the University of the Arts London.
During Christmas 2020, she took a break from film and posted her first song on TikTok, prompted by one of her videos on her personal account, and it got 500,000 likes. A snippet of a disco-funk throwback titled "Just a Waste," featuring a sample from Michael Jackson's "
Off The Wall," it went viral on the platform.
Parlophone/Elektra signed PinkPantheress after her single "Break It Off" took off on TikTok. "
Pain" gave the film student her first Top 40 appearance on the UK singles chart, helped again by its popularity on TikTok.
In 2022, the BBC named PinkPantheress the winner of their prestigious Sound of 2022 poll, an annual award that recognizes up-and-coming artists.
PinkPantheress initially gained popularity in the music industry without revealing her face, adding to the mystique and intrigue surrounding her persona. This was because she didn't want people to comment on her appearance, particularly her forehead, which she hates. That changed with a Heaven By Marc Jacobs campaign in 2022.
She missed out on featuring on a Kendrick Lamar track because she didn't pick up the phone when he rang. PinkPantheress was at the theater at the time and her date asked her to put her phone on silent. "I was watching
Nightcrawler with this guy,"
she explained to i-D.
In October 2022, she tweeted that years of exposure to loud music had left her 80% deaf in her right ear. "To state the obvious, making music has gotten harder," she told the BBC. "But I honestly did all my mourning already. Like, I've really done that."
While many assume Pinkpantheress makes many of her tracks under three minutes for viral success, the real reason is more personal. Her naturally high-pitched, often pitch-shifted vocals - paired with fast, jittery drum programming - make longer tracks feel overwhelming to her, so she trims them for clarity, pacing, and listenability.
PinkPantheress isn't one to boast about her vocal ability. "I feel like I'm not actually the best singer," she told Zach Sang. "I pride myself on my production."
She focuses on crafting melodies and lyrics rather than technical vocal performance, which she sees as secondary to the overall vibe of her tracks.
PinkPantheress opened up about her OCD on Jake Shane's Therapuss podcast, revealing that her compulsions aren't rooted in typical fears.
"I don't necessarily have many of the fears that you might have about certain things," she said. "I do have this thing where once I have a thought, it loops, loops, loops for a month and it will never stop."
She also connected her perfectionism to the condition: "If I don't consider myself a certain standard at what I'm doing, I don't see the point doing it... That's something birthed from my OCD - by not being satisfied by anything less than perfect."
