U

This is less a review and more me realising that I just can no longer relate to the wider music industry and the average music listener due to the lack of reception this album and others have recieved. This is going to be extremely incoherent.

I have spent the past week with this record meeting it on its level. Wallsocket was a pivotal record for me, in a similar way to how Smile was a difficult album to swallow because of just how foundational Nurture was for me, despite me still loving Smile as well. The difference between getting to really dig into an intricately crafted narrative hyperpop-emo record and an extremely good pop record has been interesting, but I despite that this is a really strong record on its own from Underscores.
Like, when Do It came out, my brain literally reacted to it like "this is a song that in a perfect world would be played ad nauseum literally everywhere" and physically resisted the song. And I still feel like the song is missing something to really be a slam dunk to me, I think I like Music more of the two straight pop songs (Tell Me U Want It) being me favourite single).

And what I eventually realised was this record is April's attempt to say "I have the chops to be a god damn popstar". Not just big in underground spaces as a trans musician, but just, a popstar, a hitmaker, someone who sticks in your head and never leaves.

This is just, fundamentally, an incredible pop album, and in a perfect world, this would be everywhere right now. However, there is just a sobering moment this past month that I've had to reckon with, with this record and the new Hemlocke Springs record basically getting little wider interest while records like the new Harry Styles which have been tearing up charts while leaving little actual wider cultural impact, and Luke Combs is somehow back with more mediocre country, and Alex Warren is still in the top 10 in both Australia and America. And while it's not like pop music with effort isn't coming out and getting popular, Raye's new record just came out and that is probably going to do gangbusters, but it truly feels like so often it's in spite of the effort and not because of it that pop is succeeding as of late.

Mainstream Australian outlet Sydney Morning Herald wrote an incredibly positive piece and called this record the next BRAT, and yet it it failed to even chart here in Australia.

Artists like Ethel Cain and Raye, those who aren't who are white cishet artists, are so often the outliers when they do finally succeed, and are so much more volatile in their success where a traditionally attractive artist like Harry Styles or Taylor Swift hit number 1 without having to even *have* an album rollout.

I'm tired. I'm tired of giving effort and watching people give effort and remembering that the world is built wrong.

I hope U has some kind of slow surge in more mainstream popularity like I Love My Computer did or like Midwest Princess did. Because April deserves to see the fruits of her effort in the same way that Lady Gaga did being an (at the time) cishet woman shaping pop music while being accused of being trans and lesbian.

April Harper Grey should be a popstar, we fundamentally do not live in the correct society.