"Basically all their songs are about loss and dying." Emo-loving pop star PinkPantheress on her favourite My Chemical Romance song

PinkPantheress performs at Coachella — (Image credit: Brianna Bryson/Getty Images for Coachella)

With 42 million monthly listeners on Spotify, English pop star and producer PinkPantheress (aka 25-year-old Victoria Walker) is kinda a big deal: her recent single Stateside + Zara Larsson was the biggest song in the world last month, topping both Billboard Global 200 chart and Spotify's Global Daily Chart. Nice work for someone who was uploading her GarageBand demos to Soundcloud just five years ago.

As telegraphed by her singles Tonight, which samples Panic! At The Disco deep cut Do You Know What I'm Seeing? from Pretty. Odd. and Where You Are, a collab with Willow, which contains a sample of Paramore's Never Let This Go , PinkPantheress was a huge fan of pop-punk and emo in her teens, and fronted a band who played My Chemical Romance and Paramore covers when she was just 14.

Recently, in an interview with internet personality Derrick Gee, PinkPantheress discussed her love of My Chemical Romance, and played the host the MCR song that she plays to introduce friends to the New Jersey emo superstars, Early Sunsets Over Monroeville, from the quintet's first record, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.

Article continues below

"So one thing about My Chemical Romance that I love is that basically all their songs are about loss and dying, or the process of dying," she explains. "This song, to me, has such a sense of hopelessness and like, it's a love song... it sounds like these are two people that can't be together. And there's also the undertone that he's a vampire, and they're vampires."

"I love Gerard Way!" she continues. "He loves theatre, he loves comics, he loves anything driven by these dark themes around death. This is the song I would show to people if I wanted to sell them on My Chemical Romance.

"The issue with it, though, is that they really don't have any other song that sounds like this," she adds. "This first album was probably the most in this bag they got: everything after this is a bit heavier, and a bit more structured, more mainstream, or a bit more rocky, whatever. I really, really like the song, though, it's beautiful."

A post shared by Derrick Gee (@gee_derrick)
A photo posted by on

Watch PinkPantheress guest with Paramore onstage at Austin City Limits festival in 2022.

Paramore - Misery business ft PinkPantheress (live at #ACL Fest Austin,Tx) - YouTube

Watch On

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.