Few music scenes have moved as dynamically or evolved as quickly as dance music did in the U.K. during the nineteen-nineties. From the frantic breakbeats of drum 'n' bass to the lush but austere psychedelia that migrated from Chicago to London in the form of acid house, the rapidly mutating club sounds generated subgenres that delighted the dance floor. But plenty of other styles were eaten up by the churn, overlooked by history, or derided by critical consensus. The streaming-music era has long promised to indirectly solve this sort of problem by giving listeners total access to the recesses of music history-every song, at everyone's fingertips, at any given moment. But that promise has not exactly been fulfilled: there are gaping holes in online libraries, and all but the biggest of songs and artists are often ignored in the blizzard of new music that arrives weekly.
Still, social media consistently manages to shine a light on unexpected corners of music history-mostly on TikTok, where old songs are just as likely to become hits as new ones. During the depths of the pandemic, in 2020, a British teen-ager named Victoria Walker started producing instrumentals for a friend's music on her laptop; she also began recording her own songs using GarageBand. Eventually, she uploaded them, under the name PinkPantheress, to her TikTok, where they attracted an unusual amount of attention. Two songs in particular gained traction: "Break It Off" and "Pain," both of which used samples of quintessential U.K. club tracks that were recorded before Walker was born.
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