PinkPantheress @ Olympia▪

I have never attended a show that was brought forward a day and changed venues. The L’Olympia website stated in red text that the show was postponed from the 15th to the 14th of May, and as soon as I saw that, I knew it was going to be a night of chaos. Moved up or preponed would have been more accurate. The official website for PinkPantheress listed both the L’Olympia date on the 14th and the MTelus date on the 15th, which added to the confusion.

Luckily, I didn’t miss her last stop of her An Evening With tour at L’Olympia. While scrambling to figure out which date was the correct one, I encountered many fans online who were devastated that their non-refundable flights and hotels no longer lined up. I hope they ended up making it to the show. I ended up missing the first game of the Walter Cup Finals to be there, and despite Stacy having to get her knee reset on the ice and Gosling scoring with less than three seconds left in the game, it was worth missing the game to see PinkPantheress perform.

I don’t know when I became the dad in the back of the concert, checking on the hockey game between acts and texting my friend at the game, but we move. And everyone was moving, shaking, and dancing to the thump of the bassline. It’s always awe-inspiring and mildly terrifying when you stop bopping around at a concert and can feel the bones of these old theatres creak and groan underneath you.

The creaking of the wood floors was in direct contrast to the ‘90s and Y2K notes blaring from her and her guest DJ, DJ Joe. The beats she cooks up are NASTY. Combining several genres, including emo, UK garage, pop, EDM, and R&B, PinkPantheress’ sound is distinctly alternative pop lobbed into a blender. I was not surprised in the slightest to learn that she used to be in a rock band that covered the likes of Paramore, Green Day, and MCR. She is serving us awkward emo kid turned hot alt-pop princess, and I am waiting eagerly for seconds.

If you’re tired of waiting for Charli XCX to drop a new album after Brat, or if you wish it were a bit sadder, I would highly recommend PinkPantheress’ albums Fancy That or Fancy Some More? She’s also an incredible producer and has the awards to prove it: Producer of the Year (Billboard Women in Music), British Producer of the Year (2026 Brit Awards), and BBC Sound of 2022.

The one thing that was really disappointing during Pink’s set was that she kept saying that she hadn’t been to Montreal before, but she’s actually played Montreal twice. She played Osheaga on July 29, 2022, and Theatre Beanfield on April 10, 2024. I could tell that a lot of her fans were incredibly disappointed that she didn’t remember playing for them before.

There was an easy way to determine the level of a fan based on the quantity of plaid on their person or the tininess of their purses. The fans on the barricade were decked head to toe in plaid, piercings, hair dye, and glitter before radiating out from there like a ripple in a lake. Even Pink’s male backup dancers wore kilts, and some of her wardrobe changes included plaid elements and alt fits.

She was gifted a wristband from a fan with the Kenyan flag and a crown, so she got to play dress-up onstage. She had so many wardrobe changes. My personal favourite was a pair of giant angel wings that Pink wore for Angel. Her backup dancers also had a lot of props, including light guns for You’re My Romeo. And honestly, BRING BACK BACKUP DANCERS. It’s so cool to see a group of backup dancers at a venue as tiny as L’Olympia.

I hope that the tech I spoke to passed on my clubbing recs to Pink, since she asked where to go to celebrate the end of her tour multiple times. I am so glad she decided to tour stateside, and I hope she’ll come back soon.