It’s 2021, and you come across a faceless musician with a unique, upbeat sound and bedroom-produced music. The fast drums and piano combined with her original singing voice result in the kind of songs that get stuck in your head. You think you’ve found a hidden gem, but soon, her music starts to gain popularity online, and the once faceless artist finally comes out of her shell. Kind of.
Victoria Beverly Walker or PinkPantheress is a British, electronic-pop, singer, songwriter and producer. She started her career off small in 2021, releasing short bedroom-produced tracks. Her pair of short, 1-2 minute long songs “Pain” and “Break it Off” gained attention on social media platforms such as TikTok and SoundCloud. Later that year, she created her debut mixtape “to h*** with it” and landed a record deal with Parlophone. This led to her rising path to fame with songs like “Just for Me” and “I Must Apologize.” The following year, she released her single “Boy’s A Liar,” which reached number two in the UK and the remix single featuring American rapper, Ice Spice, “Boy’s a Liar Pt.2” which gained hundreds of millions of streams and shot to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Then, released her debut studio album “Heaven Knows” in 2023, which charted in ten countries. Her success continued in 2025 with her second mixtape, “Fancy That,” which earned two Grammy nominations with UK top-40 singles “Tonight,” “Stateside,” and “Illegal.” The remix album to “Fancy That,” “Fancy Some More?” was released that same year and consisted of the same songs, featuring different artists. This remix album brought us “Stateside + Zara Larsson,” which became her second top-ten hit in the US and her first to reach number one in Billboard Global 200.
PinkPantheress is clearly a successful and talented artist, but in many ways even after so much success, she still remains as faceless as she was at the beginning. As a fan, I often find myself talking about her to my friends, and no one knows who she is until I mention one of her collaborations. Her songs with artists Ice Spice and Zara Larsson are usually the only hits they recognize, often thinking the featured artists are the creators of those songs. Both Ice Spice in 2022 and Zara Larsson in 2026 have significantly gained more recognition from PinkPantheress’ work than Pinkpantheress herself. I find this quite upsetting, especially since her music has been circulating and silently impacting the music industry for years.
Part of this is due to her personality. “I don’t think I’m very brandable. I dress weird. I’m shy,” she said in an interview. But this doesn’t mean she wants to stay hidden. In 2023, she said, “I would follow people and then unfollow them just so that they’d follow me back, because I was really desperate to get people that would listen to my music.”
This shows the complexity of the current music scene. Artists have to spend a lot of time branding themselves and promoting their brands on social media in order to gain a significant following. Recently, PinkPantheress has strengthened her image as a plaid-loving Anglophile. But, even though she is becoming more recognized, she still has a ways to go before she becomes a household name. At least in the Carrollton junior high.
