U is shorthand for underscores, but it’s also how, at least 50 times on her sort-of-self-titled album, April Harper Grey spells her object of desire. U has a compressed, equalizing power, leveling the playing field when it comes to mathematizing its relationship to I, which gets a typical definition early on: “I get what I want and then find out right after I get it, I don’t even want it.” It’s a reductive way of looking at underscores’ own trajectory, as U abandons the complex conceptual framework of 2023’s Wallsocket for a concise, escapist psychodrama, which is a way of understating that it’s an early contender for the most irresistible pop album of the year. In truth, you get what you want and then you find out right after you want it all over again: that’s U in a capsule.
1. Tell Me (U Want It)
U’s final single offers a proper introduction: “Hey!” A glimmer of music, and then a fragmented voice: “It’s U.” A wobbly beat and ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ breathing launch us into the headspace of a protagonist whose precarious behaviour becomes the subject of concern for those in her periphery. “You’ll hate looking back,” Amanda tells her, and the singer’s awareness of the fact acts as no deterrent. In true dubstep style, the track zips around to the rhythm of her lust, at once unshakable and volatile. As it fakes an ending only to resume with a laugh, the presumed Duran Duran reference gains further validity, only to be darkened by the outro’s gnarly form. It’s the eerie face of desperation, and it’s definitely doing something.
2. Music
Grey has described U as “music for my iPhone spy movie,” but ‘Music’ allows a bit of technological regression: “my iPod stuck on replay” is more like it. A sultrier take on the ‘Tribute’-type song, it turns the wet dream of a perfect tune into a metaphor for a relationship, and – at the risk of veering into therapy speak, the very thing the singer can’t stand – brings the self higher up the surface, feeling the I as desire is converted into pleasure, harmony, muuusiic. The videos for U’s other singles have more of a plot, but all that ‘Music’ needed was to approximate the feeling of it exploding out of the tiniest headphones, transforming U.
3. Hollywood Forever
A side-by-side listen of ‘Hollywood Baby’ and ‘Hollywood Forever’ is enough to underline the latter’s lack of abrasion, which says something considering that’s arguably the most straightforward song by 100 gecs, one of the first acts to bring underscores out on tour. Grey resists the impulse to fry the edges of the song even when it must have been enticingly tongue-in-cheek, like in response to “the fury in your eyes, staring at my broken electronics.” Its bounce remains slick and impeccably controlled rather than blown-out, even as the inevitable drop packs a punch. “Don’t you wanna come be famous with me?” she sings, sounding well on her way.
4. The Peace
A map of longing with smoking at its axis, ‘The Peace’ strips back to little more than sharply harmonized vocals, which isn’t to say it wafts into the ambient pop of something like her oklou collaboration. As she takes us from Brooklyn to Coachella and all the way to Europe, Grey sings with a fiery intensity, letting out a grunt before “I couldn’t escape the vibe sleeping on the couch” like she could moonwalk her way out of it. She traces a knotty intimacy that almost exists in the spaces outside music, then makes it pop.
5. Innuendo (I Get U)
In a just world, ‘Innuendo (I Get U)’ would be playing in clubs all across the world this summer. The fact that it’s not even a single speaks to the strength of the opening one, which it most resembles. But ‘Innuendo’ bops and glides and glitches in ways that are even more satisfying, leaning the unspoken tension of the previous track in an explicitly sensual direction. When it slinks low, you just know it’s going to deliver the most euphoric dance break of the album so far. It’s closing the gap between want and get, U and I, like lips shutting to reveal more than the words that could’ve have escaped them.
6. Lovefield
Here’s a song that could actually feature oklou, though underscores doesn’t hold back her maximalist urges even on the song that opens with her pleading for a heart-to-heart. It might be the album’s most forced moment of catharsis, but it’s precisely this straining that tugs at the heartstrings, dancing at the intersection of romantic fantasy (“It’ll be winter soon and I’ll be Twilight pale/ I’ll get my license and we’ll go to Florida”) and sincerity (“It hurts for me to wait on U/ I bet you’re waiting on me too”). ‘Lovefield’ feels like more than the obligatory ballad thanks not just to its unconventional progression, but the way it builds off the dynamic of ‘The Peace’ and finds the perfect hook for it.
7. Do It
Recency bias led me to include ‘Do It’ in our list of the best songs of 2025, albeit at the very bottom. Its sugar rush of a chorus might be underscores’ best, honouring her love of late 2000s pop with an extra bit of snark. By the time of the album’s release, I thought the excitement might wear off. If anything, recency bias had me underestimating the song, which hasn’t lost any of its infectiousness, probably because underscores’ maximalism is infused with texture, not just bombast or nostalgia. “It’s all on the line for me, you could ruin everything/ Or you could make me somebody new,” she sings on the pre-chorus, and that mutability is the thrill. With the run of songs leading up to ‘Lovefield’, she’s just proven she can offer you the real thing; it doesn’t mean she can’t have fun shrugging it off for a moment.
8. Bodyfeeling
Grey doesn’t end the album without letting guitars do the talking, probably anticipating some criticism towards U. It’s effective because it gets the feeling across, of course – what gets the body reverberating more than the sound of a live band? The singer may be dancing around this visceral sensation, but the solid groove hints at a foundation deeper than at least one end of the equation is ready to admit. The new Robyn album is coming out the week after U, but who said the younger generation doesn’t get sexistentialism?
9. Wish U Well
Props to this song for leading me to a Reddit post titled ‘Can I, as a Christian, listen to Post Malone?’. While the last two tracks do feel suspiciously more aligned with underscores’ last album than the self-titled era, with ‘Wish U Well’ indulging in a bit of bro-country, thematically it does bring resolution to the table. The ending is as anticlimactic as that of the love story at its heart: “This ain’t what I had imagined/ That’s just how it happened.” That doesn’t stop Grey from feeling everything in it; not closure, as she puts it, but “the gravity of losing you.” By that point, the song is all lightness, and it’s in that airy space that you can imagine the story of underscores growing bigger than U.
