Pinkpantheress On Recording For ‘Barbie’: “It Was So Much Fun”
PinkPantheress has spoken about her early days making music and the experience of working on the Barbie soundtrack in a new interview with The Guardian.
The singer reflected on her earliest days of making music: “I got introduced to music in Canterbury. I had friends in the music scene and those were the ones that really opened up that world to me. They would take me to shows in London and introduce me to these [music-production] programs… I remember thinking: ‘I have to do this. I owe it to myself.’ It sounds so dramatic, but there was such desperation.
“In the beginning, I couldn’t really produce from scratch. So I just needed something to work off of,” she says of her frequent early use of samples. “There’s a Linkin Park sample that I once used. I wanted people to listen to them while listening to me. A synergy between two artists.”
“When [single] Pain started doing rounds on TikTok, my friend said that it sounded like me, but I said it wasn’t. I lied to her. Then I thought: ‘Why am I lying?’ She didn’t think it was that big a deal. I don’t think anyone did. Using music for TikTok wasn’t that much of a thing [back then].”
She went on to discuss the pressure she places upon herself as an artist, “With every new height that I achieve, I feel like I have to do something that proves that I’m a serious artist. Even with Boy’s a Liar: people know me for the song, but I feel like now I have to prove that I can write.”
PinkPantheress also contributed the song Angel to the smash hit Barbie – The Album, the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster movie, “It was so much fun. I was really excited to be asked. I loved the actual process of meeting the director. I got to meet Mark Ronson. I went on set.”