We’re in something of a golden age for pop music at the moment. Whilst it’s easy to worry about the disastrous impact of AI, or to dismiss the state of the charts as stale—where is all the new music? How on earth has Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” stuck around in the Billboard Hot 100 for 60 whole weeks?—it seems to me that pop as a whole has never been more alive. Music festivals like Laneway and Golden Plains have felt like massive events, doing an absurdly good job of booking relevant, exciting artists (especially Laneway 2025 capitalising on the ‘brat summer’ craze). And so many massive mainstream names who have blown up in the past few years—think Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo—have been releasing a range of refreshingly high-quality music. But it’s the more alternative side of pop, and especially the crossover from the alternative into the mainstream, that most excites me, and that’s exactly where April Harper Grey—more commonly known as underscores—sits, right on the verge of a breakthrough.

From just the opening of U, Grey’s newest album, it’s clear that pop music is at the front of her mind, and that we’re dealing with an entirely different musician from the side of herself she presented on her previous releases. 2023 album Wallsocket was an absurdly ambitious concept album, drawing inspiration from rock, hyperpop, trans identity and horror movies to tell a story of three girls stuck in a small town. On U, however, these overarching concepts are traded for more introspective lyrics and sheer pop bliss. Even her signature call of “good luck!”, previously serving as a sort of producer tag—Grey records and produces all of her own music—is gone. Instead, it is replaced by the repeated announcement of “it’s U”—a sort of double meaning considering the fact that U started as a self-titled album, drawing the focus of the music onto herself. Her self-produced sound is now heavily focused on her own voice, building layers of percussion from her own recorded breathing and placing herself in the centre of the mix, refusing to be seen as anything other than a pop megastar.

It’s clear Grey isn’t playing around—her love for pop music is abundantly apparent, drawing inspiration from a range of styles and eras, sometimes even within the same song. Opener “Tell Me (U Want It)”, for example, moves very quickly from a quiet 12/8 verse, to a gorgeous pre-chorus lush with floaty vocals, to a bombastic, Skrillex-influenced explosion of drums and synthesisers—all within its first minute of the song. The rest of the tracklist is similarly varied: explosive, electronic songs like “Music” and “Innuendo (I Get U)”, softer emotional moments like “Lovefield” and “Bodyfeeling”, dance-y tracks like “Hollywood Forever” that feel like something out of a DJ set.

The thing that ties these varying styles together is a shared sense of experimentation. There are so many moments where a song expands into something else entirely, throwing convention to the wind and allowing Grey to show off her impressive production chops. The outro to “Tell Me (U Want It)”, for example, has the song exhausting all of its energy, on the verge of collapse, before a surprisingly scary-sounding choir of exasperated breaths and whistles enters the mix, with lyrics whispered on top. “The Peace” features a gorgeous, Imogen Heap-esque instrumental made entirely from Grey’s pitch-shifted voice, adding layer upon layer of vocals before the drums and grandiose synth lines eventually enter the mix. The similarly gorgeous “Lovefield” features Grey’s voice over a subdued, delicate synth line (very reminiscent of frequent collaborator Oklou), alternating between raw and autotuned so as to create a wavering, shaky feeling as she sings about a seemingly impossible relationship. As the song continues, though, the synths become more prominent, and Grey’s voice rises in volume, declaring that she doesn’t want to be “untouchable anymore”. The song becomes more hopeful, for a brief second, describing driving to Florida with this potential partner—and name-dropping Twilight!—before the sound becomes weighed down by an uncomfortable, droning synth and a layer of drums as the song ends on a gutwrenching final chorus. 

Whilst most of the songs on U take their time to build up to club-ready dance anthems, there are a few songs that beckon towards the dance floor right from the get-go. Single “Do It” is one such example, lush with heavy percussion and spliced up vocals as Grey sings about her conflict between her newfound fame and her desire to hook up with people who don’t know who she is. “I just can’t do it,” she laments during a bridge section just before the biggest beat drop of the entire album, “I’m married to the music!”. 

Similarly energetic is “Hollywood Forever” (named after the famous cemetery, where underscores performed as part of a pop-up show with collaborators Ninajirachi and Jane Remover), which describes a newfound sense of “everyday indulgence” that comes from her ascent to celebrity status. These reckonings with fame are a bit of a running theme throughout U, reaching their most dramatic as Grey touches on the idea of being buried in this titular cemetery, the resting place for major names such as Judy Garland. This morbid image lingers for a moment, coupled with an acoustic guitar line, but the music is far too excited to stay in one spot, moving into the most EDM-influenced moment of the album as Grey repeats a call of “don’t you wanna come be famous with me?” 

The strongest part of the album is how sincere it is: the desire for stardom, the highs and lows of Grey’s relationships, and her unabashed love for pop music. And these concepts all go hand-in-hand. On “Music”, Grey describes a “wet dream ‘bout the perfect song” and being around someone as like “feel[ing] the harmony” (as well as a whole range of heavy-handed yet endearing musical references), and on closing track “Wish U Well,” she laments a lost relationship by comparing it to a pop radio station that now only plays “Christian rock”. 
U paints a portrait of Grey as living and breathing this style of music, and it’s all entirely justified—the entire album provides more than enough evidence to consider her a genuine popstar. It’s really inspiring to see—especially as someone who’s also a trans woman making music—and I’m very excited to see where her superstar ambition takes her.