On tour throughout the UK, Panic Shack tried a web-based experiment for the hell of it.
“we’re gonna do this dance in every green room til we get really good, follow us on tiktok to see the progress xxxxx,” the Cardiff punk band wrote on Instagram in Might 2025, posting a video of members Sarah Harvey, Meg Fretwell, Romi Lawrence, and Emily Smith doing a dance to Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much.”
A number of renditions on TikTok, 100,000 followers, and 15.4 million views later, Panic Shack had been throughout FYPs. And so they’ve simply launched their debut album.
Fashioned in 2018, Panic Shack emerged from “daydreaming whilst at work,” in response to Harvey, and a shared love of karaoke and going to buddies’ gigs. A rambunctious, jubilant, loud punk outfit from the Welsh capital, Panic Shack brings perpetual Thelma and Louise power to bangers about ride-or-die friendship, telling jerks to GTFO, bullshit physique picture expectations, smoking rollies, meal offers, London dudes, and the dreaded ick.
Mashable sat down with lead vocalist Harvey and guitarist/vocalist Fretwell to talk by their viral success and what to anticipate from their very first, self-titled LP.
Panic Shack stole TikTok’s coronary heart with a dance
“everyone be quiet my show is on.”
Credit score: Panic Shack / TikTok
“everyone be quiet my show is on,” wrote TikTok person Morgana on a Panic Shack video. “Why is this so addictive to watch? I think I watch each of these at least 10x,” wrote welsh_witchery on one other. “Do you do divorce parties x,” added Eviebop.
Perhaps you’ve got found Panic Shack at one among their reside reveals. Or maybe you are one of many 1000’s who’ve discovered them by their sequence of “Miss You Much” dances posted since Might.
The dance was initially choreographed by Ohio-based dance teacher Jezebel Shuvani (@JezFever). Posting to TikTok in February, she described it as impressed by the ultimate scene from Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, wherein Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), Future (Constance Wu), Mercedes (Keke Palmer), and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) do their very own choreography to Janet Jackson’s 1989 banger. (The artist’s authentic “Miss You Much” video itself is ablaze with strikes.)
Fretwell had seen the dance JezFever had posted on TikTok and pitched it to her Panic Shack bandmates, Harvey, Lawrence, and Smith, who had been all on board (who would not be?). Discovering tiny corners, sunny rooftops, and cramped corridors in venues throughout Manchester, Brighton, Norwich, Leeds, and extra, Panic Shack carved out time to throw down strikes with out fail. They even dragged drummer Nick Doherty-Williams into one.
“I was like, girls, we should try that when we’re on tour together. And we just did it, and did not expect it to take off,” Fretwell tells Mashable. “It was so crazy, because so many people are, like, you’re marketing geniuses! Who is running this? I think the combination of our stage outfits and the different locations and the consistency of doing it every day whilst we were on tour was really the secret combination. We absolutely did not expect it to go viral. JezFever and the troupe are so lush as well, we’ve got an online friendship with these women.”
Credit score: Ren Faulkner
The dance boosted Panic Shack’s on-line fanbase tenfold, with a cursory calculation of the band’s “Miss You Much” movies sitting at 15.4 million views alone. The feedback are stuffed with outdated devoted and glossy new followers, the latter of whom have additionally discovered their solution to Panic Shack’s YouTube channel. “Anyone else here because they were mesmerized by their TikToks? Now I’m addicted to their music,” writes one commenter, and so they’re not alone.
Mashable Pattern Report
“You couldn’t write it, like, it could not have come at a better time,” says Fretwell. “Honestly, before the dance, we had like, 6,000 followers before we went on tour, and we came off tour with over 100,000 followers. It’s quite literally mind-blowing.”
“It’s interesting, because we’ve had a big following for a long time just for our live shows and now it’s really interesting deciphering who knows us from TikTok or from a live show,” she provides.
Panic Shack celebrates pleasure, calls out hate within the feedback
Credit score: Ren Faulkner
Having skilled poisonous trolls and hateful feedback prior to now, Panic Shack skilled the (sadly) uncommon marvel that’s being ladies on the web surrounded by positivity, enjoyable, and empowerment — all whereas being their genuine selves.
“We almost couldn’t believe that people were being so nice to us in the comments,” says Fretwell.”Some people have really emotional reactions to the dance as well. It absolutely, again, isn’t our intention, but I’m just so glad that people have found so much joy from it.”
“We’re being ourselves and I think that gets lost in social media quite a lot,” provides Harvey. “And our friendship, as well, probably shone through a little bit, as it always does with the band, and just when we’re hanging out.”
Alas, there are nonetheless dickheads on-line. In true punk kind, Panic Shack usually makes use of humour to name out misogynist feedback on TikTok movies — together with the tried and true TikTok technique of highlighting heinous feedback to call and disgrace them in new movies. In July, the band did send-ups of Robert Palmer’s 1985 “Addicted to Love” video; Shania Twain famously gender-flipped the video in 1997 for “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” Panic Shack’s personal punk model sees the band pin troll feedback and crush a lip-synch of Palmer’s music.
“Sometimes we like to highlight some of the troll comments, just because it’s just our way of dealing with it, really,” says Fretwell. “We’ve received so many troll comments over time, haven’t we, Sarz? Even back then, years ago, that’s how we would deal with it.”
“We don’t want sympathy. We’re doing it just to fight back and show show them up a little bit,” says Harvey.
“We’ve had some really horrible stuff said about us over the years, and it’s just all misogyny,” provides Fretwell. “Essentially, it’s like, whatever they want to disguise it as it, the root of it is misogyny. Don’t think they like seeing women having fun, or not doing something for male attention, for the male gaze.”
Panic Shack retains reside reveals and on-line moments separate
Credit score: Ren Faulkner
Generally artists see on-line moments as an accompaniment to their reside reveals — Charli XCX’s “Apple” dance is the tip of the TikTok-to-stage iceberg. Nonetheless, most of the time, there is a fairly strong line between what occurs on an artist’s on-line platforms and what occurs on stage. For Panic Shack, it is the latter, particularly on the subject of their viral dance — you’ll not see it on stage.
“People have asked. People have been like, can that be the encore? And I think we’ve always just said that’s for the internet’s eyes only, really,” says Fretwell. “TikTok and online is like a separate entity, particularly the TikTok app. It’s somewhere we can just try and test out different styles of like, content, I suppose. But yeah, the live show’s nothing got nothing to do with it really.”
“It’s been thrown around a bit, but then I think we just thought it wouldn’t feel authentic for us to do that on stage,” says Harvey. “I guess part of the live show is the music and, yeah, fun and games. But I think the dance would just…if people were there, the gig, were there for music, and they saw us do that, they’d be like, what? To be fair they’d probably love it.”
Panic Shack launched their debut album on July 18, with an enormous UK and European tour forward of them. On Friday, Panic Shack is taking part in a launch day gig and working a pop-up merch store in Cardiff’s The Sustainable Studio. However first? Properly-earned bevs. “Meg said she’s got a bottle of Champagne for us to pop,” says Harvey. “I’ve been reserving a special bottle of Champagne I got for my birthday that I’ve not found a reason to drink, so I can’t wait to pop it with the girls,” says Fretwell.
What can folks count on from the self-titled launch? “Lots more calling people out closer to home, lots of female friendship vibes, just to step into the Panic Shack world, really, just from start to finish,” says Harvey.
“It’s very much like, welcome to our universe, you know?” provides Fretwell. “We do want everyone to be a part of it. We want people to feel like they can be friends with us.”
