We all experience moments of feeling low, whether it’s sadness, anger, or frustration when life doesn’t unfold the way we’d hoped. In those moments, we face a choice: to dwell in the discomfort or to reframe it, understanding that the lows give meaning to the highs. Amber Mark embraces that duality on her sophomore album, Pretty Idea.
Like her previous releases, this record comes from a raw and deeply personal place, a time capsule of pivotal moments in her life, including the end of a four-year relationship, that words alone can’t fully capture. “When I’m writing, it definitely feels like a vehicle for me to understand myself and the feelings I’m going through,” she tells Juice Box Press and 1824. “Ever since I was a kid, I had a hard time articulating my emotions and expressing them honestly. Sometimes I’d get really emotional and not even understand why. Turning to music became, as it is for many artists, a kind of therapy, a way to process and make sense of it all.”
Still, vulnerability doesn’t come easily for Mark, who describes herself as a private person. She’s previously explored themes of grief and self-discovery, but Pretty Idea goes even deeper. “Tapping into the love of it all was a little scary,” she admits. “To be that vulnerable, and to talk about unrequited love, that was intimidating for me.” She credits her openness to a trusted writing team who encouraged her “to just be my 100% weird, creative self.”
Her transparency doesn’t just come through in the lyrics of songs like “Cherry Reds,” a vivid snapshot of her childhood in Goa, India, but in the music itself. “I’ve always tried to utilize the sounds and just memories and things from my childhood in my music, and I think I will continue to do so for the rest of my life…I think I carry with myself into my music without even knowing it at times.”
This rich blend of influences forms the foundation of her genre-bending sound, one that moves fluidly between funk, pop, acoustic indie, and, on this record, yacht rock. “When I went in and started writing this record, I was really into yacht rock at the time, really random. But that was like the original intention I had when making the record. But then I think, you know, my heart always lies in this kind of house up-tempo world. So it kind of melded the two in some ways, but there’s so many different sounds,” she says. The result is a collection of tracks as diverse as its emotions, from the danceable opener “By the End of the Night” to the stripped-back title track, “Pretty Idea.”
That sonic variety mirrors the emotional landscape of the record, which traces the heartbreak that followed the end of a long-term relationship. “I had imagined the rest of my life with this person and dreamed up this fantasy world of us being together,” Mark said, recounting the devastating realization that that person wasn’t “her person.”
Through that pain, she found support in close friends, including fellow artist Sabrina Carpenter, who helped her see the “pretty ideas” hidden in the heartbreak. “Her and I are very close, and a lot of the stuff on the record, she got me through a lot of it, and I spoke to her through a lot of these little situations shifts that I was experiencing and all that stuff,” Mark recalled.
Fittingly, Mark will soon join Carpenter onstage for the final leg of the Short n’ Sweet tour. “So it’s nice for it to come out and to be able to share a stage with her and sing about these things that she was so much a part of,” Mark says.
One of the stops with Carpenter is Madison Square Garden (MSG), a milestone moment for the native New Yorker. “I’ve never performed on stages at large. So this will be like a very big bucket list moment for me, especially at MSG. I grew up in New York on and off, so that’s like an iconic venue.”
The release of Pretty Idea doesn’t mark a resolution, but instead, a continuous journey toward healing and self-understanding. “I’m still learning,” Mark admits, “All these experiences are a form of growth. Certain situations might feel really low and just dark, and like how am going to get out of this? You look at those situations and you’re kind of like, well, thank you for giving me that experience, I am today because of it. And I think that’s something that I will always sing about.”
Featured Photo Credit: Wendy Ngala