PinkPantheress – 2025
★★★★☆
One of the tightest pop albums of the decade.
In a landscape where a lot of the pop music near the top is floundering and the once-superstars are struggling, PinkPantheress is tearing the scene up and making it look easy. Anyone could’ve predicted this outcome as far back as 2021 with the release of ‘to hell with it,’ which promptly conquered social media. She was impossible to avoid, every other video would have ‘Break it off,’ ‘Pain,’ or ‘I must apologise’ playing behind it. Her stranglehold continued into 2023 with Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2, now bolstered even further by Ice Spice (for better or for worse). Come 2025 with the release of ‘Fancy That,’ despite making significantly less noise than her previous projects upon release, it’s proven to both stand the test of time (so far) and easily lodge itself as her greatest work so far.
It’s rare that an artist can pack so much life into twenty minutes of music. Each song is brimming with energy, even the slightly slower ‘Nice to Know You’ and ‘Stateside’ are anthems in their own right with some of the punchiest choruses on the album. This doesn’t even touch on the catchiness of every single song, be it the intro on ‘Illegal’ or the “let it all go!” chorus on ‘Girl Like Me.’
The production on this mixtape is bordering on perfect. Little things stick out, the cheers on ‘Girl Like Me,’ the cowbell on ‘Tonight,’ and the strings on ‘Romeo’ all tie the songs together so neatly. The instrumentals on their own aren’t particularly ornate or grande, but every song has its own quirks and personality with little bells and whistles decorating them, like pouring glitter onto a birthday card. There’s several motifs hidden in various tracks, namely the “yeah!” or “wow!” interjections popping in routinely.
Admittedly, Pink had issues with tracklisting on previous works. The music was good, but it felt like it had a lack of cohesion sometimes. Fancy That feels engineered to combat that. It’s smooth to the point of feeling like one long song shapeshifting into various dance-pop anthems. The transition from ‘Tonight’ to ‘Stars’ still catches me off guard every time I hear it. The same can be said about ‘Intermission’ and ‘Noises.’ ‘Romeo’ also makes for a fantastic closer, leaving me dying for more.
With time, ‘Fancy That’ will only get better. It will likely be an album credited as indicative of the time and looked as one of best pop albums of the decade. However, it isn’t PinkPantheress’s opus, not yet. The short length is her Achilles’ heel on her releases, if she can put out something like this that surpasses forty minutes, I’ll have no choice but to sit down and shut up.
Favorite Track(s): Illegal, Girl Like Me, Tonight, Stateside, Romeo
Written by Michéal Doran
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