Written by Rory Marshall
Mainstream pop, while widely loved, has to play it safe to appeal to its broad audience. But once in a while, there’s always someone to shake up the landscape and bring new ideas into the mix. Enter underscores, the Fil-Am headphone-clad hyperpop darling with her newest album “U”. The album is more accessible than her other work, featuring all the ear-catching hooks, dance-beat tempos, and melodies that beg you to sing along tropes that mainstream music tends to have- but that doesn’t discount its experimentality in the context of pop as a whole.
Coming from her last project, her sound has taken a U-Turn from grungy electro-pop rock seen in “Wallsocket” to going back to her roots, equipped with influences from dubstep and future bass, harkening back to her early SoundCloud days. The album exudes confidence and charisma, paying homage to her production inspirations; taking the intensity and edge from dubstep icon Skrillex, while taking a softer page from Imogen Heap. It’s a love letter to the genres while being unmistakably underscores.
Although the album is on the shorter side with only 9 tracks and a runtime of 34 minutes, no track shows any lack or feels thrown in as an afterthought. Every synthesizer, vocoder, and LFO is intentional and produced to a tee while not going farther than it needs to. Each song stands on its own while being cohesive as an ensemble. It’s a testament to the ear she has for music production, with it being an album with no features, and her being the sole credit for the production.
As impressive as the production is, the themes and lyrical content were not left by the wayside. With the glitz and glamor, laissez-faire hookups, and Hollywood parties that ultrastardom brings also come unrequited love, isolation, lost identity, and sobering self-reflection. It’s easy to forget that with each track being a dance-worthy banger, underscores is taking the opportunity to outline the dark side of fame. Rather than causing a dissonance between the lyrical content and the music instrumentals, underscores was able to toe the line between the headbanging and crying in the club, creating a metaphor for her experience being in the spotlight.
With all the confidence and conviction that the project radiates, there’s a constant shadow of self-doubt cast over the tracks, sewn into the lyrics. While tracks like the explosive opening piece “Tell Me (U Want It)”, “Music” and “Do It” carry the “Live fast, Die young” detached attitude that one adopts for their life of fame, tracks like “Bodyfeeling”, “Lovefield”, and the tragic closing track “Wish U Well” show the consequences that can come with it. The life you left behind, and the pitfalls of losing oneself. This is succinctly captured in one of the most vulnerable tracks of the album: “The Peace”. A track about changing yourself in any way just to keep the one you love in your life. While it’s a devastating prospect, the authenticity of her words cuts deep into the hearts of listeners who’ve found themselves in the same position: “And I won’t smoke unless you’re smoking too / Uh, yeah, I just wanna keep the peace with you”.
With the depth that ‘U’ has, by the time you’ve finished it, you’ll realize the toll it had on you. It’s wonderfully nuanced, capturing the double-edged sword of notoriety in a maximalist hyperpop masterpiece. It’s a breath of fresh air for the mainstream pop scene as a whole, giving the masses a break from songs with hooks engineered to grab your attention in a 10-second TikTok. Everything from the production, the songwriting, and the overall vibe that underscores created for the project; The heart put into this album is undeniable, and the sound speaks for itself. Labeling her a trailblazer in the scene would be an understatement, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear her influence pop up in the mainstream moving forward.
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