{"id":547382,"date":"2026-03-27T00:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547382\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T00:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:07:11","slug":"pop-star-shows-love-to-san-franciscos-stonestown-mall-on-new-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547382\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop star shows love to San Francisco’s Stonestown mall on new album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like any 25-year-old from San Francisco, April Harper Grey loves the Stonestown Galleria<\/a> mall. So much so that she made it the star of her newest album.<\/p>\n

Grey, better known to her fans as Underscores, is one of the biggest names in hyperpop, the frenetic, autotune-heavy subgenre of pop music popularized by the likes of Charli XCX<\/a> and 100 gecs<\/a>. Last year, Grey played at Coachella. Recently, though, she\u2019s spent a lot of time at the mall.<\/p>\n

Since its Friday release party at DNA Lounge<\/a>, Grey\u2019s newest album, \u201cU,\u201d has become a critical hit. Pitchfork gave it a coveted Best New Music designation; NME wrote a glowing five-star review. According to a recent interview with the Fader<\/a>, Grey regularly wandered around the mall while writing \u201cU,\u201d recording voice memos in its liminal corners. The album\u2019s cover, an illustration by Japanese artist Shohei Ochiai,<\/a> is a warped illustration of the mall\u2019s interior, with song titles pasted on familiar-looking storefronts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The name of her upcoming tour, the Galleria Tour, appears to be a nod to the mall as well; the tour poster<\/a> features a photo of Underscores on one of the mall\u2019s escalators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like to tether all my albums to a real-life locations,\u201d Grey told the Fader. \u201cIt\u2019ll be nice years later to look at a map with all of the different albums, and I like giving the fans someplace to make a pilgrimage to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cover of her first album, \u201cFishmonger,\u201d is a water tower in New Jersey. Her second, \u201cWallsocket,\u201d is a concept album that takes place in a fictional Michigan town. For \u201cU,\u201d Grey said, San Francisco \u2014 and specifically the mall \u2014 was a natural choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had gone to the Stonestown Galleria all my life,\u201d the artist said. \u201cIn high school, I had a ritual where I would walk from my house to the mall while listening to a specific album. It was very sacred to me. I started to become obsessed with the idea of the third album\u2019s location being Stonestown Galleria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grey, 25, was born and raised in San Francisco, and attended a local Catholic school<\/a> for nine years. (She gave a brief shoutout to the city when she played Outside Lands<\/a> in 2024.) At the same time that she was attending church three times a week, she also began producing music. First dubstep, when she was 13, before moving on to\u00a0hyperpop.<\/p>\n

The version of the mall that appears in the album cover is fictionalized. Ochiai, the album cover\u2019s illustrator, explained the process to Fader:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t just sharing a vague vision; we were refining specific elements together\u00a0\u2014 the color of the pillars, the shape of the headphone logo, the exact shade of the floor and the sky,\u201d Ochiai explained \u201cWe went through multiple revisions until we were fully satisfied. It felt less like sharing a concept and more like building a physical structure together: underscores was the designer, and I was the on-site director.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like any 25-year-old from San Francisco, April Harper Grey loves the Stonestown Galleria mall. So much so that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,244040],"class_list":{"0":"post-547382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-sfgculture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}