PinkPantheress tops stardom-predicting BBC Sound of … poll

Bedroom-pop singer, songwriter and producer PinkPantheress has topped the BBC’s annual Sound of … poll for hotly tipped new musical talent.

The 20-year-old from Bath, who moved to London to study film, first built buzz on TikTok, where she now has 1.1m followers, uploading tracks that span UK garage, jungle and pop. Her tracks Pain and Just for Me – the latter was covered by Coldplay – broke into the UK Top 40 in 2020. Her debut full-length project, the mixtape To Hell With It, reached No 20.

“Music has been the same for so long. It’s like: please, can we get something else?” she told the Guardian in an October interview, explaining her genre-mixing approach. “I hope people start to feel more free to break the boundaries of what is acceptable, or the most sonically appealing to everyone.”

Runners-up in the poll, voted on by a panel of dozens of industry figures and musicians including Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran, are Isle of Wight indie duo Wet Leg, whose debut single Chaise Longue became a cult hit in 2020.

Related: PinkPantheress: ‘Music’s been the same for so long. Can we get something else?’

Rounding out the Top 5 are emotive pop balladeer Mimi Webb, who reached the Top 10 with single Good Without; Lola Young, who broke through to a wider audience by appearing on John Lewis’s Christmas advert with a cover of Together in Electric Dreams, and Central Cee, the drill rapper whose stardom is already well established with two Top 10 hits and three nominations at this year’s Brit awards.

Previous winners of the poll include Adele, Michael Kiwanuka and Sam Smith. Last year’s winner was Coventry rapper Pa Salieu; 2020 winner Celeste went on to have a No 1 album with her debut Not Your Muse.