When PinkPantheress first logged on to TikTok, she was writing and recording a song a day. “Some of them got a good reception,” she tells Apple Music, “but ‘Pain’ was the first one where the sound ended up traveling a little bit. A lot of people haven’t really heard garage that much before, and I think that for them, the sample [Sweet Female Attitude’s 2000 single ‘Flowers’] is a very palatable way to ease into garage breakbeats, very British-sounding synths, and all those influences.” One in a series of viral moments she enjoyed this year, “Pain” perfectly encapsulated the London artist’s knack for combining disparate elements: the simplicity and immediacy of a singsong vocal with the pinballing pace of garage breakbeat; the naturally melancholy and stupendously upbeat. It’s a fusion that made her one of the year’s breakout stars, and, in the process, introduced “the sound” to an entirely new generation of listeners. “They’re all vividly sad,” she says of the 10 tracks that would appear on her debut mixtape, to hell with it, “Pain” among them. “I think I've had a tendency, even on a particularly happy beat, to sing the saddest lyrics I can.”