PinkPantheress Is The Queen Of The 2000s Sample

There’s two kinds of nostalgia: firsthand and secondhand. Secondhand nostalgia is having warm, fuzzy feelings for something you haven’t personally experienced yourself; it’s a longing, “those were the days” fondness for the old-school Pizza Hut buffet when you’ve only ever used the Domino’s Tracker. Meanwhile, firsthand nostalgia is the more direct Webster’s-Dictionary-defines meaning of the term: “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.”

PinkPantheress makes secondhand nostalgia sound firsthand.

The (tall!) British artist released her new mixtape, Fancy That, last Friday. Over the course of 20 bubbly minutes, PinkPantheress builds a 1990s/2000s soundscape around her modern, candy-rush songs. She’s a crate digger in a digital era. There’s “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?” by Hot Topic emo group Panic! At The Disco on the throbbing “Tonight.” The skittering “Girl Like Me” is driven by a pair of songs from electronic music duo Basement Jaxxx, “Romeo” and “Always Be There,” while “Stateside” is a banging recontextualization of Adina Howard’s R&B-meets-G-funk hit “Freak Like Me.”

Fancy That also features UK favorites The Streets, Underworld, Groove Armada, Sugababes, Just Jack, and William Orbit, while her breakout hit, 2021’s “Pain,” introduced Sweet Female Attitude to a new generation — a generation that, it’s worth pointing out, PinkPantheress is part of.

PinkPantheress was born in 2001, seven years after Basement Jaxx formed. But this era, along with 1990s drum and bass and late 2000s pop-punk (she’s a huge Paramore fan), speaks to her for the same reason that millennials look back at the 1980s through rose-colored glasses.

“When people look at the fashion or aesthetics [of the 2000s], and the culture, and the way people just cared a lot less than they do now, I think that really appeals to them,” she theorized to Sniffers. “I guess reviving it is the only way we can really imagine ourselves in that time.”

PinkPantheress’ revival of the 2000s on Fancy That takes the form of indie-pop breathy vocals and radio-ready hooks supported by sampled songs. But the time capsule approach is never nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s her way of “sharing a love for something and reinterpreting it,” she explained to Mixmag. “I would only sample something I love, I would never sample something for the thought of it having nostalgia-bait or whatever reason. I do it because I want to reinterpret something I love to different audiences.”

Listening to PinkPantheress makes me feel comforted by the past and excited about the present. Here’s some of her finest sampling work.

“Pain”

Sample: “Flowers” by Sweet Female Attitude

“Attracted To You”

Sample: “Starz In Their Eyes” by Just Jack

“Noticed I Cried”

Sample: “And Yet…” by Signaldrift

“Last Valentines”

Sample: “Forgotten” by Linkin Park

“Where You Are”

Sample: “Never Let This Go” by Paramore

“Tonight”

Sample: “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?” by Panic! At The Disco

“Noises”

Sample: “Suntoucher” by Groove Armada

“Girl Like Me”

Sample(s): “Romeo” and “Always Be There” by Basement Jaxx

Fancy That is out now via Warner Records. Find more information here.