PinkPantheress is proudly speaking up for a different kind of fan.
The UK singer told host Aria Hughes around the 22:30 mark that she feels she represents “a group of people which I represent that are just shy girls.”
“I think that we’re not allowed to be shy enough sometimes,” she said. “Another thing about being a pop star is you always need to be the super confident figure that’s perfect. And again, being from the UK, so many of my favorite pop stars were not perfect beings. … Sometimes they were unglamorous. Sometimes they were messy.”
She went on to say, “Being shy is a secret power for me because I feel like there’s a lot of girls out there that are just as shy who also feel like they need to be represented. And I feel like I do that for them. When I meet my fans, I feel so connected to them. I get so many comments saying, ‘You feel like my older sister,’ and that makes me happy because I’d rather be your older sister than someone you see as unattainable.”
The 24-year-old recently made waves after nearly canceling her NPR Tiny Desk Concert upon learning she couldn’t use autotune for the set. Despite her initial hesitation, she went ahead and delivered a raw, stripped-down performance featuring tracks like “Pain,” “Tonight,” and her viral TikTok hit “Illegal.”
“This is my first performance I’ve done with no tuning,” she told the audience. “I’ve never sung with no tuning before, so this is really scary. I almost didn’t do this because the NPR people were like, ‘You can’t use anything.’ Then I was like, ‘Let me try to figure it out and see how it goes.’”
