Review: PinkPantheress Floats Further ‘Up’ with Debut ‘Heaven Knows’

Within two years, Pinkpanteress has moved from hell to a heavenly state. Shortly after releasing her debut song “Pain” on TikTok in 2020 when she was 19, the British pop artist continued using the platform as a testing ground for her music and went viral with “Break It Off,” “Passion,” and “Just For Me.”

By 2021, PinkPantheess (real name Vicky Beverly Walker) released To Hell With It, a hodgepodge of her previous short-cut tracks—with only a pair running just over two minutes. Telling 10 stories within 18-minute run of songs, To Hell With It sampled PinkPantheress’ influences spanning hip-hop, 2-step electronic, R&B, alternative pop, and more.

Lighter and lengthier, and two years in, PinkPantheress’ full-length debut, Heaven Knows, penetrates more divine scopes of sounds. Running nearly twice as long as To Hell With It at 34 minutes, the 13 tracks still move like a flipbook and highlight another dimension of the artist, who has grown by bounds within an experimental three-year span.

To Hell With It was a rough musical draft of PinkPantheress, while Heaven Knows has sketched defined lines around her sound and dimension with “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” featuring Ice Spice, which went to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her revisit to the track is a empowered follow up to the original “Boy’s a Liar” released on PinkPantheress’ 2022 EP Take Me Home.

Filled with more seraphic sounds, from opening “Another Life,” featuring Rema—and one of the longer running tracks at nearly three minutes—through the celestial hyperpop of “True Romance” and singles “Mosquito” and “Capable of Love,” Heaven Knows also comes during an entirely higher state for the singer and songwriter. In 2023, PinkPantheres was also tapped to record the dance-pop “Angel,” which could have easily fit as another Heaven Knows track, for the soundtrack of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film Barbie.

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Soul singer Kelela featured on the slow sizzling “Bury Me,” while British rapper Central Cee joins PinkPantheress on the sped-up boom of “Nice to Meet You” and the story of an addictive love: You’re keepin’ me up each and every night / No one ever fеlt quite like this /
It’s your motor, it’s thе way you kiss.

Now, PinkPantheress has arrived closer to her artistry, and the music she’s meant to make since her earlier TikTok days. Heaven Knows, she has.

Photo: Lia Toby/Getty Images for Warner Bros.