On Sunday night PinkPantheress collected her first MTV Video Music Award. On Wednesday morning TIME named her to the TIME100 Next, its annual list of rising figures, with a tribute written by Kelela. Three days separated the two honours, and they recognised different things: one a music video, the other the producer-songwriter behind it.
The VMA came with a caveat. The award was one of the non-televised categories, and it was her only win from five nominations. As Stereogum put it, she is now the type of artist who wins MTV Video Music Awards, “though not the kind where the actual awards get televised.”
What Kelela Wrote About Her
TIME’s tribute is short and direct. Kelela wrote that she was instantly floored the first time she heard PinkPantheress, after people online had joked that the younger artist was her daughter. She said she understood the comparison but found it reductive, because PinkPantheress is “not an extension of anybody”.
The core of the tribute is about authorship. “She writes her own songs, produces a lot of her own music, and has an incredibly potent sonic vision,” Kelela wrote. She added that PinkPantheress is doing this as a Black femme in a genre that has rarely made room for them, “which means every track she makes is also a door staying open behind her.”
That emphasis matters for how the list places her. TIME files PinkPantheress in its Artists section, and Kelela’s praise is for the work behind the records rather than a single hit.
The VMA She Won, and the Four She Did Not
At the VMAs at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on 27 September, PinkPantheress won Best Art Direction for the “Stateside” remix with Zara Larsson, Stereogum reported, noting that it was her first moonman and that the prize was not handed out on air. She was in the room for the ceremony all the same. The show, hosted by Snoop Dogg and broadcast live on CBS, was dominated by Madonna, who took seven prizes, and Taylor Swift, who won Video of the Year, according to Billboard.
She and Larsson went into the night with five nominations each, among the top contenders, according to Billboard’s full winners list. All five were for “Stateside”: Song of the Year, Best Collaboration, Best Dance, Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects. Song of the Year went to BTS for “Swim”, Best Collaboration and Best Dance both went to Madonna entries, and Best Visual Effects went to Ariana Grande. That left the art direction award as the song’s only win.
The fan-voted Best New Artist prize went to Sienna Spiro, whose “Die on This Hill” took four months to reach the Hot 100’s top 20.
Why a Storefront Video Won Art Direction
The winning video is built almost entirely on production design. Directed by Charlotte Rutherford, it casts the two singers as mannequins in neighbouring storefront windows, Rolling Stone reported when it was released in January. PinkPantheress’s window is a red, tartan-patterned vision of her Fancy That era, with men queuing for mugs and magazines printed with her face. Larsson’s is a sequin-covered shop of holiday goods in the spirit of her album Midnight Sun, from seashell magnets to beach towels and giant dolphins.
By the end the barrier between the windows comes down. It is a simple idea executed through sets, props and colour, which is exactly what an art direction category rewards.
How Stateside Became a Global Number One
The song’s rise was slow before it was sudden. “Stateside” debuted at No. 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January, Rolling Stone reported, with Larsson not yet credited on the entry. PinkPantheress responded on X: “Now Billboard….. Give Zara her flowers!!!!”
The turning point came from sport. The song grew after the figure skater Alysa Liu used it for her exhibition performance at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on 21 February, two days after she won the women’s title, and in March it reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 and the Global Excl. U.S. chart, Billboard reported.
By April it anchored her Coachella set in the Mojave tent. On the second weekend Larsson came out, Janelle Monáe joined on guitar, and the set ran through “Stateside”, “Romeo”, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” and “Illegal”, according to Billboard. Larsson also performed the title track of Midnight Sun and teased that PinkPantheress could feature on an upcoming deluxe edition of the album, and the set’s most personal moment came during “Illegal”, when the actor Tyriq Withers returned to the stage with a rose to mark her birthday.
A Busy Week Beyond the Awards
The VMA and the TIME list bookended a crowded few days. On 24 September Google Chrome opened its Unfinished Projects exhibition on New York’s High Line, in which PinkPantheress, Solange Knowles and the NFL quarterback Joe Burrow each finished a long-held idea. Hers was a ballet flat, a take on the early-2000s styles she grew up with, Galerie reported.
The design pairs a transparent outer shoe with patterned pieces that can be switched out underneath and removable magnetic decorations, with motifs ranging from stripes, polka dots and lace to bows, pearls, crystals, hearts and a recurring crown. Much of the early work was deliberately low-tech, with sketches, fabric samples and material experiments, while Chrome’s Split View kept her online references beside the designs. The photographer Tyler Mitchell, who documented all three projects, told the opening crowd that you would not immediately think of PinkPantheress as architecting her own ballet flat, adding that he found it “beautiful that Chrome is giving space to these people to think expansively”.
Then, hours after the VMAs, a remix she co-produced with the UK dance artist Count Baldor arrived on iTunes: her version of “Twentyfive Eight”, included on a bonus edition of Tinashe’s album Popstar, Stereogum reported. She had previously named that singer as an artist she wanted to produce, and Tinashe said at the American Music Awards in May that the two were collaborating, Stereogum noted.
Who Else Made the TIME100 Next
PinkPantheress is one of several musicians on this year’s TIME100 Next. The list also includes Raye, Sombr, Conan Gray, Alex Warren and Megan Moroney, with tributes from figures including Olivia Rodrigo for Gray, Tate McRae for Moroney and Stella McCartney for Sombr. The actor Chase Infiniti, one of the guests at PinkPantheress’s Coachella set, is on the list too.
TIME divides the list into Phenoms, Artists, Leaders, Innovators and Advocates, and many of the tributes are written by the honourees’ peers. That is why Kelela’s words carry weight: they come from an artist working in a neighbouring lane.
What the Recognition Adds Up To
Taken together, the week recognised two sides of the same work. The VMA rewarded the visual world around “Stateside”, while TIME’s tribute rewarded the songwriting and production that make PinkPantheress distinctive. The ballet flat and the remix showed the same appetite for making things herself.
The one thing the week did not deliver was a televised win, and a five-nomination tally made that gap easy to notice. For an artist whose breakthrough hit spent its first chart week at No. 100, a moonman, a global No. 1 and a TIME listing within a year is a steep climb.
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