But these loose reworks quickly accumulated hundreds of thousands of views. She had virtually no following when she started posting, and her clips were visually unremarkable, with her face blocked out by big text. Her other influences-explored to various degrees on her debut mixtape, to hell with it-include K-pop, pop-punk, and that zone of 2000s British alternative pop occupied by artists like Just Jack, Lily Allen, and Imogen Heap.
In early breakthroughs like “ Pain” and “ Break It Off,” she sings nimble topline melodies over garage and drum ’n’ bass classics, namely “Flowers” by Sweet Female Attitude and “Circles” by Adam F.
A semi-anonymous university student from Bath, England, she started sharing 20-second song loops to TikTok late last year. It’s impossible to talk about the rising zoomer affinity for UK club music without invoking PinkPantheress. “The song is also dance-y, and chill, and pretty girly.”
“After PinkPantheress’ success, it was clear that people liked that vibe,” she explains, noting how the speed of drum ’n’ bass is conducive to a quick, frame-by-frame montage style common on the app. In fact, piri had been convinced that “soft spot” was a “Tik Tok-y song”-a label that once evoked cocky, meme-filled rap tracks-and actually tried paying a few creators to promote it upon release.