Grey, also known as underscores, visits Tangram Mall in Queens, describing it as nearly abandoned and using the emptiness to contrast the crowded, paranoid energy of her “Tell Me (U Want It)” video. She wrote her third album, U, after spending weeks in Minnesota’s Mall of America, drawing on long-standing fascination with commercial spaces like malls, hotels, and airports. Her interest centers on the feelings these places evoke—nostalgia, romance, and clinical abstraction—rather than copying any specific pop style. She has warped genres since her tween years making bedroom dubstep, and her background includes earlier creative work and a former life as a K-pop vlogger.
"Tangram Mall is nearly abandoned. Inside the hulking, 275,000-square-foot complex that opened a few blocks away from the Flushing, Queens train station last year, escalators escalate listlessly. Goldfish Swim School, usually packed with kiddies practicing flutter kicks, is just rows of empty water. Except for an older man alone on a chair, hunched over a crossword, the cavernous central court is like a speckless bowl. It's so early that even the Gatcha Clawcade blocks us when we try to enter."
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