All the things I’ve seen,
all the things I’ve been must upset you.
Moving to a new city after a broken heart requires a certain faith in geography. Surely a different address, unfamiliar faces, and a few hundred miles can improve upon the person who packed the suitcase. Then comes the stranger discovery: the life you once wanted has become difficult to remember. Berlin’s Pretty Average explores that uneasy freedom on All I Wanted, I Forgot, a song about starting over and finding that some of your most cherished desires have quietly missed the connection.
That uncertainty carries into the accompanying video, where performance footage blurs beneath layers of static and bleeding color, matching the disorientation of the band’s beautiful blur of shoegaze, post-punk, and alternative rock. One of the earliest songs Pretty Average wrote together, All I Wanted, I Forgot appears on the album The Highs and Lows of Being Pretty Average, released on cassette this past May.
A cascading drumbeat sets the song in motion while sustained guitar notes spread across a dense bed of distortion. The bass carries a melodic ache familiar from The Cure, giving the guitars something solid to stretch against. There is a sweet sadness here that recalls the distance and desolation of Joy Division, though the broadening shoegaze textures allow a softer, almost yielding quality into the music. Candy’s voice sits low in the mix, as though she is singing from the next room and leaving the door closed.
That separation gives the words their peculiar weight. The lyrics inventory experiences, former selves, prayers, and departures, addressing someone who might resent everything that happened beyond their reach. By the time that accounting reaches “All I wanted, I forgot,” even the original wish has become elusive. As the guitars swell, their accumulating layers suggest water moving across an inscription, gradually making the names and promises harder to read. Forgetting carries its own small mercy, along with the disquiet of losing something you once thought essential.
The band describes the song as an exploration of “the disturbing yet exciting feeling of being in a new city and starting over with a wounded heart, leaving behind your past and your dreams.” Their conclusion is brief enough to sound almost surprised: “Somehow we became someone new.”
The video gives that uncertainty a physical form. Blue and violet stage lighting washes over the musicians while overlapping images, colour separation, and television static repeatedly interfere with the view. Faces and instruments become difficult to hold in focus; a close-up gives way to another image before either quite settles. The effect suggests a concert being recalled through an unreliable recording, with the band’s presence surviving all the visual interference. It suits a song in which the feeling remains clear even as its original object slips away.
Watch the video for All I Wanted, I Forgot below:
Formed in Berlin in 2022, Pretty Average centre Candy’s perspective on identity, social rejection, and the uncertain prospects facing her generation. Their 2024 EP, All I Wanted, was produced by Francisco Parisi of Minimal Schlager, with a Musicboard Berlin scholarship following that year. Regular Berlin performances, a Spanish tour, and support slots with acts including Genn, DVTR, Francis of Delirium, and Adult DVD helped develop a project whose priorities remain rooted in playing together.
Those priorities took some recovering. Lineup difficulties and disagreements with their former label delayed an album originally intended for 2025; the band credits a European tour this May with renewing their enthusiasm. Recorded in a self-made studio, The Highs and Lows of Being Pretty Average preserves the energy and imperfections of musicians sharing a room. Its extended songs also reflect their stated preference for small venues, direct support, and giving an album room for long songs and changes of pace.
The album is available on cassette through Bandcamp and at the band’s concerts. Listen to All I Wanted, I Forgot below and purchase the single here.
Pretty Average head out on their autumn album release tour later this month, with Garlands joining the September and early October dates.
Autumn 2026 Tour Dates:
* With Garlands.
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