PinkPantheress explores the pain of love and money in Heaven Knows

TikTok’s favorite UK pop girl PinkPantheress has finally dropped her first studio album Heaven Knows. After the success of her mixtape to hell with it and several sporadically released singles, PinkPantheress continues to carry the bedroom pop genre with a full-length project.

Inspired by dance music from the 90s and early 2000s, the English songwriter and producer creates a piece that centers her relationships with fame and love. The album has a spooky yet robust opening through “Another life.” This track has an organ in the beginning but transitions into her typical electronic instrumentation. “Another life” also explores the feelings of a lover passing away.

Following the theme of love, PinkPantheress discusses many different situations that can occur in a romantic relationship. For instance, in “True romance,” she plays with the idea of falling in love with a famous singer and her apprehensions about how she will be treated in the presence of fans. The track is very upbeat and includes a crowd cheering and clapping as if she is actually at a concert.

There are a handful of other songs that talk about unfavorable relationship scenarios. “Feel complete” explores the feelings associated with having an alcoholic partner and “Ophelia” is about the singer getting killed by her partner. The production on “Ophelia” is a standout as the end of the song reinforces the death idea with the vocals glitching and sounding as if she is underwater. This is a very clever nod to Hamlet because the character Ophelia dies by drowning.

In terms of the grapple with fame, two tracks in particular execute this theme. “Mosquito,” one of the lead singles of this album, discusses how PinkPantheress is overwhelmed with her sudden rise to fame and is hyper-aware of the amount of money she has. She also feels that the only thing she truly has ownership of is her lover in her life. “Internet baby (interlude)” is more obvious about this struggle, which specifically calls out the parasocial relationship some of her fans have with her.

PinkPantheress does a stellar job of staying consistent with her production and airy vocals, which made fans fall in love with her in the first place. She does get a little experimental on this piece though with her expanding into the rock genre. This is best demonstrated in the instrumentation on “Capable of love.” Though it has elements that are very similar to her standard production that uses breakbeat loops, there are heavy electric guitars and aggressive drums. In regard to the features on this album, they are mostly drill rappers and each of them lend themselves nicely to the flow of their respective songs. Rema, Central Cee, and Ice Spice all make an appearance on the album.

Heaven Knows is a solid debut album that shows off PinkPantheress’ ability to elaborate on a simple idea throughout her lyrics and to collaborate with artists of a different style. Contrary to popular belief, some songs on this album did pass the 3-minute mark because PinkPantheress is known for having her songs be on the shorter side. This project, however, did feel very safe as there was not much variety in the production, and upon first listen the rap features felt out of place. Though she does very well in the bedroom pop genre, hopefully she can try something new next and still excel as an artist.