Three years after releasing her debut album, Three Dimensions Deep, Amber Mark returns with her sophomore effort, Pretty Idea, via Big Family Music/Interscope Records.
“This album carries many highs and lows and lessons I didn’t know I needed,” Mark explained via a social media post. “So excited to finally share these songs with you. Consider this my way of turning all my bad ideas into Pretty ones.”
Across 12 tracks, Mark grapples with the aftermath of a relationship, leaning on the nostalgic sounds from the ‘70s to the 2000s to help her sort through it all.
Opening with “By The End of the Night,” she glides over breezy synths and piano that recall the yacht-rock smoothness of TOTO’s “Georgy Porgy.” Here, she turns heartbreak into liberation. “By the end of the night / When the lights all go out / I’ll be all right, all good / By the end of the night / I’ma forget about you,” she sings.
Moving on from love isn’t always a linear process. On “Too Much,” which interpolates Usher and Alicia’s 2004 hit “My Boo,” Mark is still spellbound by her ex, reflecting on the visions she had for what she thought would be a lasting love, including “dreams of the biggest diamond.”
On “Cherry Reds,” she sinks deeper into reflection, where she floats through a cloud of warm memories: “Smoking cherry reds in the trees / Catching feelings in the breeze / Oh, the innocence that we / Had to last a summer’s dream.”
On the Anderson .Paak-assisted “Don’t Remind Me,” Mark tries to cope with the void left in her heart. “I’ve been getting f****d up nightly / Anything that don’t remind me,” she sings.
Meanwhile, “Different Places” with John The Blind recollects two partners out of sync (“We dance in different places”). As the album unfolds to the latter part, there is greater clarity that is articulated with the reassuring “Problems” and self-realized “Doin’ Me.” “Each night, I found my light in the mirror,” she sings in the latter track.
The closing title track gently ties the album together. Over a gentle guitar and light strings, Mark sorts through the remnants of what once was: the good, the bad and the in between. Altogether, it feels less like reality and more like a ‘Pretty Idea’ — beautiful, fleeting, and lingering in memory.
As indicated above, Pretty Idea is the follow-up to Mark’s debut album, Three Dimensions Deep, which was released in January 2022. The latter project included the singles “Worth It,” “Competition,” “Foreign Things,” “What It Is” and “Softly.”
Beginning Oct. 23, Mark will join pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter on her Short n’ Sweet Tour for multiple nights in Pittsburgh, New York, Nashville, Toronto and Los Angeles.
In February 2026, Mark will launch her headlining Pretty Idea Tour in North America before heading over to Europe in the spring.
Stream Amber Mark’s new album Pretty Idea below.
