PinkPantheress
Victoria Beverley Walker (born 18 April 2001), known professionally as PinkPantheress, is an English singer and record producer. Her songs, which are frequently short in length and include samples of music from the 1990s and 2000s, span a number of genres, including bedroom pop, drum and bass, alt-pop, and 2-step garage.
Not to be confused with Pink Panthers.
PinkPantheress
Victoria Beverley Walker
18 April 2001
Bath, Somerset, England
Kent, England
- Singer
- songwriter
- record producer
2020–present
In 2021, while attending university in London, she posted several songs to TikTok that went viral, including "Break It Off", and she subsequently signed to Parlophone and Elektra Records. Her singles "Just for Me" and "Pain" from her debut mixtape To Hell with It (2021) peaked in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart and were certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). She won BBC's Sound of 2022 poll and her 2022 single "Boy's a Liar" reached number two in the UK, while its 2023 remix with American rapper Ice Spice became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three. She released her debut album, Heaven Knows, in 2023.
Early life[edit]
Victoria Beverley Walker[1] was born on 18 April 2001,[2] in Bath, Somerset,[3] to a Kenyan Luo mother from Kisumu,[4] who works as a carer, and an English father, who works as a statistics professor.[5][6][7] She has one older brother, who works as an audio engineer.[7] When she was five years old, her family moved from Bath to Canterbury, Kent, where she grew up.[7][8] Her father moved to the United States to work at a university in Austin, Texas when she was 12 years old, while she and her mother stayed in England.[7]
Walker took piano lessons as a child, and, at age 12, sang "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King at a school talent show. When she was 14 years old, she became the lead singer in a rock band, which covered songs by My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and Green Day, and performed with them for the first time at a school fête.[5][8][9]
She studied film at the University of the Arts London until 2022, when she dropped out.[10][11]
Career[edit]
2020–2021: Career Beginnings and To Hell with It[edit]
Walker started writing music in high school to help a friend before eventually writing music on her own.[3] At age 17, she began using GarageBand to produce instrumentals for her friend, fellow singer Mazz, and she later used GarageBand to record many of her early songs while lying down in her university hall late at night.[10][12][13] She started uploading original songs of hers to SoundCloud as PinkPantheress, where they received little attention. After a video posted to her personal TikTok account in December 2020 received over 500,000 likes, she posted a snippet of her song "Just a Waste" as PinkPantheress later that month in the hopes of reaching a wider audience; the snippet soon went viral on the platform.[6][9][14]
PinkPantheress's songs "Break It Off" and "Pain" went viral on TikTok in early 2021, with the latter peaking at number 35 on the UK Singles Chart in August of that year.[10][15][16] She was signed to Parlophone in April 2021. In June 2021, she was featured on GoldLink's song "Evian" from his studio album Haram! and signed to Elektra Records.[17][18][19] After a snippet of her song "Just for Me" gained attention on TikTok, she released it in August 2021, along with a music video co-directed by her released the following month.[20] On the UK Singles Chart, Beginnings number 27, making it her highest entry on the UK Singles Chart at the time.[21][22] It earned PinkPantheress nominations for an iHeartRadio Music Award, an Ivor Novello Award, and two NME Awards.[23][24][25] In early October 2021, she announced the release date and title of her debut mixtape, To Hell with It, which was released on 15 October 2021 through Parlophone and Elektra Records and debuted at number 20 on the UK Albums Chart.[26][27] The mixtape was preceded by "Pain", "Break It Off", and "Just for Me" as singles, as well as "Passion", released in February 2021, and "I Must Apologise", released in October 2021.[28][29][30] PinkPantheress performed live for the first time in October and November 2021 in London.[31][32]
Personal life[edit]
Walker, as a singer, songwriter, and producer, has discussed experiencing body dysmorphia from a young age.[45] She also suffers from gradual hearing loss from exposure to loud music and microphone feedback. She reported being 80% deaf in her right ear in 2022.[43][87] Walker revealed her medical condition while appearing on The Louis Theroux Podcast. Walker's hearing has been altered: "[V]oices now sound mostly like bass ... due to the damage."[88] Damage that began with early noticeable signs of tinnitus, or the sensation of ringing sounds in the ear.[88]
As a producer, Walker is not stopped by the condition, though it has made her role as someone who listens to and crafts sound-as-music more difficult. "To state the obvious, making music has gotten harder ... But I honestly did all my mourning already."[43] NIHL is irreversible yet preventable.[89]
Studio albums
Mixtapes