If there’s one thing a good British pop girlie loves to do these days, it’s have a dig through the crates.
From Charli xcx to Jade to PinkPantheress, today’s top purveyors of quality pop hailing from across the pond keep on making brilliant moves with their music in the form of samples, interpolations and features of incredible artists that deserve the spotlight.
“When you have taste as an artist, you can’t fail,” PinkPantheress confidently said while munching on popcorn during her sit-down with Zane Lowe. And she’s right!
The 24-year-old English singer-songwriter already proved an exceptional level of taste on her 2021 debut mixtape to hell with it and debut album, Heaven knows – one of the best albums of 2023, which packed early ‘00s R&B/Y2K pop nostalgia, Lily Allen, Imogen Heap, K-pop, drum and bass, and UK garage into a tight half-hour set.
Pink (of the Pantheress variety, not the one flying through the air) is back on Friday (May 9) with her second mixtape Fancy That, a brisk 9-track, 20-minute set blurring together even more genres, samples and interpolations at breakneck speed.
No, she hasn’t changed her ringtone-length pop style: not one song goes past the three minute mark, but frankly, it’s become her trademark. Hearing her “ten toes down” explanation about how she makes music and reflect on music marketing in the TikTok era made me respect the choice more. (Besides, for a mixtape, short songs are par for the course.) And luckily, she hasn’t strayed from her blender-pop brand of production, either.
“Announcing this tape marks a huge milestone for me as an artist, this feels like the most tied together project I’ve applied myself to as an artist and for my fans who have been with me for years, I hope they can hear the signs of growth in me as an artist,” she said in the mixtape’s official release, which referred to Fancy That as her “fun and kitsch-y era, rooted in British culture.”
The influences are vast on this go-around, cooked up with producers like aksel arvid, Count Baldor, phil, Oscar Scheller, and The Dare, including bits and pieces of Groove Armada, Panic! at the Disco, Underworld, Basement Jaxx and yes, even an obscure Sugababes cut from 20 years ago. (Even the album cover is kind of giving Lily‘s Smile and Natalia Kills‘ Trouble.)
She elaborated further on her ever-evolving sound and influences on Zane: “How can I make two albums of drum and bass and garage? It shows no development. It shows no growth. It all adds to a bigger picture. One day, once I’m five projects in, we can look at all of them and see where I’ve gone.”
But back to the ‘Babes.
“Nice to Know You” – not to be confused with “Nice to Meet You,” another one of Pink’s songs – samples an incredibly cool collaboration between William Orbit, the Ray of Light co-architect himself, Kenna and the ‘Babes. (Keisha and Mutya are credited as co-writers here. Er. Sorry, Heidi…)
The track was originally featured on the producer’s album Hello Waveforms, released in 2006. It stretches the group’s incredible harmonies along a spacey, downtempo soundscape, and is one of the coolest things that the ‘Babes have done in their discography.
Sadly it’s also collecting dust, given that it’s not on streaming. In fact, you can only find it floating around in physical form (a CD, heard of it?), Soundcloud (and the “here because of PinkPantheress!” comments are just starting), or your ancient iPod in storage.
“If anyone can clock the sample at first listen I’ll be very shocked and very surprised happily,” she told Spotify UK.
“There’s actually a Sugababes sample that’s in a song called ‘Nice to Know You.’ They did a song with William Orbit, he was the guy that produced for Britney Spears a lot. Madonna, ‘Frozen,’ ‘Ray Of Light,’ so I feel like a lot of Sugababes fans won’t probably know that they had a song with William Orbit.” (I had to laugh at “produced for Britney Spears a lot.” Cue “Alien” glitch PTSD.)
Plucking “Spiral” from out of nowhere is an inspired choice – and even seems to have shaken the music maestro himself, who seems just as surprised to discover the sample being used as the rest of us.
“No idea how they found it, but we might get that out too, even if unofficially, I own all the rights, to run alongside. You could have a chat with @loughnanhooper about it, as I’m full on with rehearsals this weekend x,” he wrote in the comments to the song’s brilliant co-writer Karen Poole on Instagram. (She herself was blown away, writing: “Woah 😭 On her new mixtape @pinkpantheress ‘nice to know you’ samples an old song I wrote with @williamorbit and @sugababes called ‘spiral.’ Amazing she dug it out of the archives and rehashed 🙌. I’m such a fan.”)
If Miss Pink manages to get “Spiral” up on streaming soon because of “Nice to Know You,” we’ll be indebted to her eternally.
And that’s not even all the ‘Babes love on the mixtape.
The melody in the post-chorus of the brilliant “Stateside” is an interpolation of “Freak Like Me,” their 2002 hit Adina Howard cover.
It was produced by The Dare, who had no idea about the song, which allowed Pink to drag him in an interview: “No [he did not know who they were], but, I mean, everyone needs to be educated at some point in their life,” she amusingly said on BBC Radio. A pop nerd after my own heart, actually.
Get into Fancy That (buy it on vinyl here), and bring a hard hat with a headlamp and a pickaxe, we’re going mining in the digital depths with PinkPantheress for sonic gold.
PinkPantheress has also announced a residency at London’s O2 Academy Brixton, if you fancy that. Buy tickets here.
Listen to the MuuTunes playlist on Spotify…
Check out the MuuTunes Spotify playlist. You can also subscribe on Apple Music.
Read the lyrics to “Nice to Know You”…
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