At the end of 2022, pop singer-songwriter Mark Ambor felt lost in his music career. Despite recently signing a record deal and releasing his debut EP, Hello World, something didn’t feel right.
“I fell into this routine of teasing a song, [and] if it did well, putting it out, but I was feeling like I wasn’t saying anything I really mean,” he remembers. “I wasn’t digging deep or singing about things important to me.”
To clear his mind, Ambor, 26, embarked on a months-long international backpacking trip with his then-girlfriend — and returned feeling grounded with a whole new wave of inspiration for songs. He quickly wrote the whimsical, acoustic “Good to Be” and now refers to it as the first time he was musically “genuine and fully expressing myself.”
Just a few months later, he struck gold: While playing guitar in his bedroom, he wrote the lyrics, “You and me belong together/Like cold iced tea and warmer weather,” which would become the instantly catchy hook to the cozy, uplifting “Belong Together,” his ultimate breakthrough and first Billboard Hot 100 hit.
Ambor grew up with a musical background in Pleasantville, N.Y., playing the piano from a young age at his parents’ request. Though the skill took a backseat in high school, he rekindled his love for the instrument as he approached graduation, trading the classical pieces he previously learned for modern-day pop songs. He proceeded to pen his first song that summer, as he grappled with the emotions of having to leave his small hometown to attend Fairfield University in Connecticut. “I didn’t want to leave home,” he says, “and I tried to write a song to get those feelings out.”
He then returned to work that night as a barback and casually sent the song to his parents in a group chat. “My mom was like, ‘Dad and I love this song. Who’s the artist?’ ” he recalls with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Mom, what do you mean?’ It’s me!”
Ambor self-released a few songs while obtaining a marketing degree in college, and upon his graduation in 2020, decided to take six months to completely immerse himself in chasing his dreams as a musician before considering a different job. “COVID happened after I said that,” he recalls. “I got to spend time working on music at home.”
Thanks to a suggestion from a friend, he joined TikTok later that year. He steadily began to grow a following with his cool guy next door vibe: People gravitated not only toward his big smile and curly brown hair, but to his voice and disarming demeanor as well. He soon began posting covers — including breathtaking renditions of Coldplay’s “Yellow” and Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” — as well as a few originals, and ultimately caught the attention of then-independent manager Kyle Thomson, who admits he’s a “sucker” for a great voice over a piano melody and asked Ambor to send a few demos.
“It was so early on in both of our careers,” says Thomson. “I was excited to dive into something that I felt was going to be a fun project to build.” By the end of 2020, Ambor had signed a management deal with Thomson.
Like Ambor, Thomson knew that some of his artist’s early work wasn’t playing to the singer-songwriter’s strengths. “At the beginning, he told me he wanted to make early 2000s festival, opera-rock music, like Passion Pit or Grouplove,” he says. “I was like, ‘That doesn’t make sense for what I think your qualities are. Why would you take your natural, raspy voice and distort it with synths?’ What he meant [initially] was that he wanted to make music that made him feel the same way that those bands made people feel.”
But after hearing “Belong Together” for the first time, Thomson knew that Ambor had succeeded in his mission. On the heels of his release of “Good to Be” in October 2023 — and its growing popularity on a global scale — Ambor began to tease the forthcoming new track in late December. And following a few months of building hype on TikTok, “Belong Together” arrived on streaming services on Feb. 16.
Ambor continued to stoke the fire well after its release, posting many videos on the platform of him walking the streets of major European cities while on tour and singing its dialed-up final chorus, several of which have compiled more than 10 million views each. Per Thomson, user-generated content and influencer marketing was crucial in making “Belong Together” “as big as humanly possible.”
By May 11, the single debuted at No. 87 on the Hot 100. It later reached a No. 74 high — and has spent 21 weeks and counting on the ranking. It has also reached Nos. 24 and 20 peaks on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. and Pop Airplay charts, respectively. “Belong Together” has earned 141.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 610.2 million official on-demand global streams through Sept. 26, according to Luminate.
“It has been really surreal to write something that is so heartfelt and authentic to myself and then feel it resonate around the world the way it has,” Ambor reflects. “The way a song can mean something to a fan that’s different than my own experience, but it’s their own story that they’ve attached to a song of mine … that part blows my mind.”
In August, Ambor’s debut album, Rockwood, arrived through Hundred Days/Virgin Music Group, despite some hesitation from the rest of his team to put out a full project too quickly. (Ambor notes the success of “Belong Together” helped in convincing them otherwise.) He split with the label soon after its release, and while he doesn’t divulge much on specifics, he emphasizes trusting his gut while continuing to grow his career.
“I think people sometimes get too caught in the industry of it all,” he says. “Maybe I’ll sign to a major; maybe I’ll stay independent forever. What really matters is putting out good music and meeting and talking to the fans.”
“He has the best work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met,” adds Thomson. “Mark thinks that he can be Taylor Swift, and I’m not going to stop him.”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
