{"id":660511,"date":"2026-10-29T09:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/660511\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T09:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:48:10","slug":"pop-prodigy-underscores-i-dont-think-gen-z-is-a-loveless-generation-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/660511\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop prodigy Underscores: \u2018I don\u2019t think Gen Z is a loveless generation\u2019 | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

The life of a rising pop star: One day, you\u2019re performing your own song with Charli xcx<\/a>, her dancers emulating your choreography, an arena\u2019s worth of fans screaming along. The next, you\u2019re on a surgery table, with a healthcare professional yanking four superfluous teeth out of your mouth. Even pop stars need emergency dental work sometimes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all par for the course for April Grey, the San Francisco-born, Chicago-based musician who records as Underscores. Her 2026 has been, plainly, wild: her third album, U, released in March, was met with acclaim and attracted a small army of new fans. Many of the shows on her tour in support of U, earlier this year, were upgraded due to demand, and one expects the bump she\u2019ll get from her current run supporting Charli xcx\u2019s Music, Fashion, Film tour will push her into even bigger rooms. It\u2019s a blow-up befitting the level of ambition Grey put into U, which is a taut, compulsively listenable pop record that sounds like a mid-2000s Now That\u2019s What I Call Music! compilation as recreated by Aphex Twin. \u201cAs I was making it, it felt like a very big swing for the fences,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted it to be big.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grey is video-calling from her tour bus a week after her wisdom tooth surgery. (\u201cThe swelling wasn\u2019t too bad,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t even think I got too chipmunky.\u201d) She knew that this year would be crazy \u2013 any album release year is, given how much touring and promotion is required to sell a record \u2013 but getting the call to join the Charli tour kicked things up a notch. \u201cOn my headline tour, many of the shows were upgraded to larger venues, but some weren\u2019t, so there was this whiplash of playing to 4,000 people and then 400 the next night. The main struggle has been trying to figure out how to adapt the show,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter getting the Charli call, it\u2019s like: \u2018How does this look in an arena?\u2019 It definitely is chasing a moving target.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grey was born in the year 2000 and grew up amid the San Francisco tech boom. Her father is a musician who was \u201cdiscovered by Elton John in a bar\u201d but by the time Grey was born, he was \u201cdeep in startup world\u201d. Her mother was a teacher, but now has a \u201ccrazy job selling jewellery to like, princes and stuff\u201d. Grey \u201chad a very vibrant childhood, and [San Francisco is] a really insane place to grow up \u2026 I think there\u2019s an era before the tech boom that people romanticise a lot, but I can look at it now post-Covid and be like, wow, the tech boom, when it was first happening, was the glory days,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Grey started making music at a young age, but really began taking things seriously when she was about 12, she says. It was hearing the American dubstep producer Skrillex that really changed things. \u201cAfter discovering Skrillex, I was like: \u2018All right, I\u2019m gonna start taking this shit seriously,\u2019\u201d she recalls. From there, she was very \u201cone-track minded\u201d in that she didn\u2019t really do anything else: \u201cI didn\u2019t have other friends, so I was obsessed. Now, I think I have a better work-life balance, but I\u2019m a pretty shy person. But if I\u2019m being honest, I was always very confident about music. There wasn\u2019t really a plan B.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from Silicon Valley, a rowdier group of revolutionaries were congregating in the city, which was quickly becoming a hub for future bass producers such as Shawn Wasabi and the Nest HQ label in the mid-2010s. Grey was a teenager and fledgling producer around that time, and relished the opportunity to see stars of the scene so close to home. \u201cI was like: \u2018These people are legends\u2019, and it was such a trip to be able to go to those [events]. I was trying to immerse myself in it, and then everyone left because they got priced out,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI haven\u2019t really resonated with\u00a0love\u00a0songs in\u00a0ways\u00a0other people\u00a0have<\/p>\n

During high school, Grey realised that maybe she should have been spending more time cultivating a social life, as she saw people \u201cgoing to parties and doing all these crazy things\u201d. \u201cI was like, \u2018Damn! I haven\u2019t done any of that shit,\u2019\u201d she recalls. But within a few years, it was clear she was on the right path. After spending a few years releasing brazenly avant garde music online, Grey released her debut album, Fishmonger, in 2021. It was an underground sensation and turned her into a critical darling.<\/p>\n

Fishmonger and its follow-up, 2023\u2019s Wallsocket, felt hugely accomplished, but they didn\u2019t have the intense laser focus of U. Wallsocket was a sprawling, rock-adjacent concept album about three young women coming of age, and Grey says its reception made her feel \u201cmisunderstood\u201d. \u201cI was almost embarrassed that I had accidentally made a rock opera or something \u2013 I\u2019m not a theatre kid, I\u2019m a jazz band kid,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cAfterwards, I thought if I was going to try my hand at a pop record, now would be the time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On U, Grey tried to write nine love songs, because she hadn\u2019t written many previously. Before, she hadn\u2019t thought that she was even able to. \u201cI just don\u2019t think I\u2019ve really resonated with many love songs in ways that other people have, and growing up, I had issues with showing affection or intimacy. It was something I had to work at,\u201d she says. Even so, she doesn\u2019t buy the idea that gen z is a loveless generation. \u201cI feel like there\u2019s a lot of love to be had. Maybe we\u2019re having less sex because it\u2019s scary or something. That might be true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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U, with its Britney-meets-Oneohtrix Point Never production, vaulted Grey out of the underground into a more mainstream arena. But it wasn\u2019t until about a month ago \u2013 when she met her childhood hero Skrillex at a dinner \u2013 that she realised she was in a new echelon. \u201cI was sitting next to him, and he was just really nice, trying to include me as much as possible, asking questions,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI think people like that are just so willing to talk to people, and I\u2019m not as much like that. It\u2019s hard for me to initiate, and I\u2019m kind of realising like, damn, I\u2019m 26. I can\u2019t be shy any more. We gotta cut that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spending time on tour with Charli, too, has shown her a different side of celebrity and pop stardom. \u201cShe is one of the nicest people I\u2019ve ever met. She pops in and checks on us, and she\u2019s very supportive,\u201d she says. \u201cAt a level like hers, you worry that anybody under that scrutiny will turn into some kind of diva, and she\u2019s not like that at all. It reminds me to check myself when I get diva-y. Like: Charli doesn\u2019t do that, so I shouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever move Grey makes next, it seems likely that she\u2019ll keep graduating to bigger and bigger stages. \u201cIf I think about it too long, it starts to make less and less sense,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I gotta be ready for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underscores<\/a> tours the UK and Ireland, 9 to 16 November; tour starts Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The life of a rising pop star: One day, you\u2019re performing your own song with Charli xcx, her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-660511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}