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A monumental first half of 2026 propelled the 26-year-old from the underground to the brink of the mainstream. She’s figuring it all out in real time.
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April Harper Grey might be one of the most commanding pop stars of the moment, but she can’t figure out what to eat for dinner.
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She spent almost 24 hours trying to pick a restaurant for this interview taking place between the first two dates of her GALLERIA tour. After sharing her favorite foods (sushi and pasta), the 26-year-old suggests we meet at the Jollibee in Irvine. An hour and a half later, she decides she’d rather go to the Whole Foods hot bar to “be healthy.” Or maybe we should hit In-n-Out. Eventually, we end up at an unremarkable Italian restaurant — “is this too fancy lol,” she asks when she texts me the location — in Tustin, a sterile, NPC-ass city that’s 90 minutes from Los Angeles.
We’re sitting at a candlelit wooden table in a restaurant that feels upscale to the point it’s almost clinical. Orange County is probably the most artificial and fake place in Southern California, and the outdoor mall we’re eating at is no exception; with its big-box stores and manicured landscaping, it’s a capitalist utopia.
The formality feels a little silly for the occasion, like we’re two unsupervised children on a sponsored playdate, engaging in stilted conversation over garlic bread that tastes 3D-printed, since the restaurant didn’t offer free bread for the table. “Sometimes they’ll put olive oil and then they’ll put a big thing of vinegar, like, right in the middle. And I don’t fuck with vinegar. I like when they separate it,” she says, sharing her thoughts on the integrity of bread dipping.
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On stage in Los Angeles the night before, Grey was dynamic. As underscores, she projects confidence, able to inspire idol-like fervor by bouncing around with an energy best compared to Sonic the Hedgehog. Her music is similarly frenetic. Off the stage, though, Grey is shy, quiet, and skittish. She fidgets when she’s deep in thought, and trails off at the ends of sentences. Her features are piercing — a dark brow and cutting brown eyes — but she often has trouble sustaining eye contact from behind her bangs. At multiple points in our conversations, I wonder if it’d be easier to communicate with her through a screen.
The GALLERIA tour comes on the heels of underscores’ new record, U, released in March. The album is glittering pop maximalism at its finest, a sublime and deeply felt blend of dubstep, trance, and hyperpop filled with boundless potential. It sounds like you swallowed the last 20 years of pop music and vomited it back up. Most importantly: it bangs.
Over the past six months, U has been the catalyst for Grey’s propulsion from underground status to the brink of the mainstream, with her deepest emotions squarely at its center. It’s thrown her into a blur of excitement and critical acclaim, amassing her placement on a slew of best album lists (including from this very publication) and a wholly devoted, rabid fanbase that dutifully produces unhinged fancams, DIY merch, and earnest deep dives into her and her music.
Grey says her dream isn’t the whole world listening to her music. But when I ask her what the goal is, she answers with a glint in her eye: “I think the goal is Madonna.” It’s a contradiction — the irony isn’t lost on me that Madonna is a world-dominating pop star.
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