REVIEW: Charli xcx & underscores @ Xfinity Mobile Arena
On September 11th 2026, I experienced euphoria comparable to the first look of your newborn, a med school acceptance, or discovering a groundbreaking medical advancement. That’s right, I was front row to Charli xcx and underscores for opening night of the Music, Fashion, Film Tour. My dear, electro-pop lovin’ friends and I rolled fishnets up our legs, drew on perfectly angled eyeliner wings, and joined the five other people in line on the sweltering sidewalk outside the Xfinity Mobile Arena at 11 am, or, in the eyes of overworked college students, the crack of dawn.
After the craze of “Brat Summer” in 2024, Charli proved she was more than a temporary trend with the July release of Music, Fashion, Film: a genre-bending, transparent project that reestablished her rightful place in the scene. She may not be as mainstream anymore, but she kept the true, longtime, and loyal fans (called “Angels”) fed with more art.
After sitting still in the boiling sun for almost 8 hours, doors opened, and we ran like a monster was chasing us to claim our spots in the pit. All four of us made it to the barricade. The stage was two feet away from us, and we held onto that metal bar with pride. Before the lights turned off, Charli reeled us in with the pre-show playlist consisting of beloved deep cuts such as c2.0, Silver Cross, Delicious, and even a few tracks from her longtime friend and primary producer, AG Cook.
The opening act, underscores, real name April Harper Grey, was a perfect choice to kick off the show at 7:50 sharp. Her setlist mirrored what I experienced at her headlining show a few months prior, but there are absolutely no complaints on my end. She opened with her newest release, Unlimited Love, and kept the mostly inattentive ears of the audience intrigued with smash dance hits such as Innuendo (I Get U), Hollywood Forever, and time-traveled to 2021 with Spoiled little brat. It made my heart happy seeing Grey showcase her gifts to an audience of 20,000 knowing I saw her in a 1,500-capacity venue just a few months prior. If you wanna dabble in the works of Miss underscores, I recommend easing into her newest album, U, before diving headfirst into older projects, as they tend to be a little bit heavy. I’m elated to see what’s to come now that she’s emerged into Charli’s inner circle.
At 9:08pm, flames hit our immediate view. David Cronenberg’s “Oblivion is freedom” album outro repeated multiple times as Charli strutted onstage in a vermilion leather minidress with fishnets underneath. Charli kicked off her set with Rock Music, encapsulating the song’s essence and lyrics by headbanging, throwing the mic around, and flipping her hair. It’s no wonder Courtney Love called it the greatest song she’s ever heard. Charli didn’t give the audience time to breathe before moving on to the next MFF hit, Yeah. I swear that in these moments, everyone turned British. She wrapped up her red-dress set with I’m Afraid on a fire-coated catwalk and briefly left the stage for a costume change.
Three minutes later, the intro to Track 10 blasted out of the speakers. A notable fan favorite, the audience’s howls and roars resounded through the venue so loudly I thought my eardrums were going to bleed (in a good way, of course). She returned to the catwalk wearing a casual black, grey, and white slip dress over those same fishnets. Track 10 is always fun to see live, and this performance was no exception. Every chance she got, she threw herself on the floor, whipped her hair back and forth, and swayed her heart out. I even saw someone in the audience crying.
One of the most notable parts of her set, or at least to us Angels, was the inclusion of a couple of her old hits. Charli asked followers on her Instagram what songs they would like to see her play on tour, and the responses filled me with doubt. Requested deep cuts such as You’re The One, Roll With Me, and Grins haven’t been performed live in years, with some even hitting the decade-long mark of setlist exclusion. I thought there was no way Charli would all of a sudden come to appreciate the songs she made in her late-teen years until she declared that the next song she would be performing would be an old one. What I didn’t expect to hear was the first track she ever released, Stay Away. While she has stated that this hit was one of her favorite songs of hers, it was kinda-sorta assumed among the Angels that this niche single would stay in the early vaults. It warmed my heart to see almost everyone around me singing along to every single word. It reassured me that the audience in the pit with me had been there since the beginning and weren’t just clinging on to a dead trend. It was exhilarating to have those three minutes knowing I was in a crowd of genuine Angels.
What got the most screams out of me, however, was hearing the beginning bass lines of underscores’ Do It and Charli demanding that we give a warm welcome for Grey’s return to the stage. I’ve never seen an audience more engaged with an opener. Even people who weren’t singing along to her opening set were dancing their hearts out to the renovated performance. Charli’s backup dancers were even doing the dance seen in the track’s music video. To think that just three months ago, underscores was an electro-pop hidden gem, and was now sharing a stage with Charli freakin’ xcx and gaining new fans every second. I’m beyond eager to see what she’s capable of doing now that she’s been given shoulders to step on.
The last song that Charli played that night, aptly, was the closing track to Music, Fashion, Film, No One Lasts Forever, a song that features a spoken-word outro by critically acclaimed directorDavid Cronenberg. While I already had an idea of what the outro would consist of during her Lollapalooza set, I’m not going to complain because the end of the show was even more beautiful the second time around. This time, in a torn-to-shreds T-shirt, Charli performed the first three minutes of the song as usual– casually singing while grasping onto the mic with what looked like all of her upper body strength. When it got to the part of the song where Cronenberg takes over, Charli froze in a confident, upright position as her backup dancers slowly made their way next to her to pose in place. Freezing was a beautiful artistic choice, as it forced the audience to take in every single word Cronenberg was preaching to us, with one of the most notable parts being the repetition of the words “Oblivion is freedom,” which was depicted on almost every merchandise option. Once Cronenberg’s time was up, more fire painted the stage, and the concert abruptly ended. This was, in my opinion, the best way to send us off: with food for thought. Most listeners skip Cronenberg’s lengthy outro when listening on their own time, but processing his philosophical lecture, followed by the lights immediately turning off, led to everyone’s jaw dropping once everyone left the stage. It was theatrical, which is rare to come across in today’s age of concerts. This new tour is for the Angels, and the setlist let us know we were in the right place.
Thank you, underscores and Charli, for an exceptional experience. Count me in for a fourth viewing, whenever that may be.
