Amber Mark - "Lose My Cool"

Two months ago, Amber Mark clicked and uploaded her first song to Soundcloud. Just like countless aspiring artists, she was dreaming and hoping her bedroom beats and lyrics channeled from her heart might make the requisite ripples online to catch someone’s ear. Anyone’s. "Lose My Cool" is simultaneously insistent, fresh, and classic, and in the two months since she pressed publish, the song’s been pricking all the right ears, specifically radio producer JJ Corsini who was instantly captivated. He nudged the song in DJ Zane Lowe’s direction, who in turn cued it up for his Beats 1 show. Then Apple placed it on the iTunes homepage, with the Hot Tracks accolade, where it stood shoulder to shoulder with Bieber, Swift, Drake, Rihanna, Future, and Ariana—pretty top-notch company to be keeping—and thousands of downloads were purchased. Today she's nipped up to number 35 on Spotify's Global Viral Chart.

Mark lives in New York City with her godparents and sister. She wrote 3.33am, out today, in her bedroom, before recording it in SoHo and flying to London for its final mix. She’d find solace in New York City’s sedated nights. The title refers to Mark’s nocturnal writing state. “I was living with my godparents. We all live in separate apartments but we were always in and out of each other’s apartments like one big house in the city. I liked to write at night because I felt the most alone.”

Her isolation was more than just annoyance from family members. She was recovering from a reality-shattering loss. Mark remembers receiving an educational pamphlet about the stages of grief when her mother began hospice shortly before passing in 2013. None of the bulleted states matched her own. With the making of her first song “Can You Hear Me?” followed by “Space” and “Monsoon,” she realized that she was developing her own steps of overcoming bereavement. There’s no correct way to lose someone, especially when you’re a young adult still shaking off teenage growing pains. It’s an enigmatic transition that we all have to experience, passing through to another understanding of life.

3.33am embodies that process of major loss, Mark honoring her mother through her own personal list of emotional checkpoints. While making music, she was exposed to the vast amount of emotional stress. She wrote out her own list of what she went through following her mom’s passing. “It was regret, anger, isolation, sadness, questioning — like a lack of faith, questioning, Is there a god?-type feeling — and kind of overcoming and all that stuff. Once I wrote down that list I was at that stage of, not feeling better but, like it was easier to deal with the fact that my mom was gone. That feeling of her gone was always there but it is almost easier to live with it.”

Each track that she wrote and continued to write would correspond to a feeling on the list. “Regret is called ‘Regret.’ Anger is ‘Lose My Cool.’ Isolation is ‘Space.’ Sadness would be the interlude into ‘Monsoon’ and also ‘Monsoon.’ ‘Can You Hear Me?’ is lack of faith and questioning. ‘Way Back’ is overcoming. It was definitely interesting to look at that list and, ‘Oh wow, this is really how I dealt with it without even realizing I was going through it, until I made a list.'”

The whole album, filled with tribal clapping and Indian beat-influence is fresh, fun, and lovely. get behind these summer jams cuz they will have your toes tapping and your face smiling. 

So today, with expectations out the window, I choose Amber Mark's "Lose My Cool" as my, hope for everything - expect nothing, never stop believing, give yourself the gift of 'maybe', song for a, broken doesn't mean forever, fragile doesn't mean weak, happy doesn't mean forgotten, Tuesday.