Underscores Joins Charli xcx Tour as Album 'U' Draws Acclaim

By Elena Vasquez

San Francisco-born musician April Grey, who records as Underscores, is opening Charli xcx's Music, Fashion, Film tour after her third album, U, arrived in March 2026 to acclaim. The Chicago-based hyperpop artist has spent the year converting critical praise into demonstrably bigger rooms.

The numbers tell the story plainly. U is her third album. It came out in March 2026. Many dates on her subsequent headline tour were upgraded to larger venues because of demand, and her current run supporting Charli xcx is expected to push her into even bigger ones.

What does the Charli xcx slot look like?

One day, Grey performed her own song onstage with Charli xcx, with xcx's dancers emulating Grey's choreography while an arena's worth of fans screamed along. The next, she sat on a surgery table while a healthcare professional pulled four superfluous teeth from her mouth. Even pop stars, the Guardian notes, need emergency dental work sometimes.

The contrast captures a year the Guardian describes as, plainly, wild for the 26-year-old artist.

How big was the ambition behind U?

U is a taut, compulsively listenable pop record that the Guardian likens to a mid-2000s Now That's What I Call Music! compilation as recreated by Aphex Twin. Grey's sound draws on the San Francisco tech boom, an aesthetic inheritance from her birthplace.

She set out to make the album large. "As I was making it, it felt like a very big swing for the fences," Grey said. "I wanted it to be big."

The swing connected. U attracted what the Guardian calls a small army of new fans, and the album's reception set up the tour upgrades that followed.

What stands between Grey and the big leagues?

Two obstacles, according to the Guardian's framing: her own shyness and a fear of love songs. The interview's headline quote pushes back on any assumption that her generation has closed itself off emotionally: "I don't think Gen Z is a loveless generation," Grey said.

That statement matters for how listeners read U. An artist wary of love songs, insisting her generation is not loveless, is effectively announcing a negotiation between irony and sincerity, and U is where that negotiation plays out.

The trajectory is straightforward: acclaimed album, upgraded rooms, arena crowds via Charli xcx's Music, Fashion, Film tour. Grey's next test is whether the arenas she is filling as an opener become rooms she headlines herself.