Blessing Jolie makes room for the road not taken on “Software Developer”

For Blessing Jolie, it’s all about self-expression. “I couldn’t write music if I didn’t sing it,” she says. “I couldn’t sing music if I didn’t write it, it’s that sort of thing for me.” When asked about her songwriting influences, she cites rappers such as Eminem and Jay-Z. Listening to Jolie's work, this might be surprising. It certainly fuses genre, but is not especially close to the Bling era or hardcore hip-hop of American Gangster or The Marshall Mathers LP. The influence, Jolie explains, is not necessarily the sound, but what is being said. “Rappers… they all have their own character. They’re all very different. Only Eminem can say [what he says]. Only Jay-Z can say that. So it was the storytelling, and I think also the mere fact that no one else could say it.”

That passion for wanting a song to tell a story, and tell her story, is the clear starting point of “Software Developer”, the third single from Jolie’s upcoming album 20something. The track allows folk-infused guitar to take centre-stage alongside Jolie’s powerful, expressive voice, which darts nimbly across complex, knotty lyrics. She could be “one hell of a software developer,” she notes, if only “I could ever beat / This little malady / Of writing melodies.”

It’s a look inward that is somewhat self-effacing, and doesn’t shy away from the apparent fallacy of choosing music over a more traditional path. Jolie imagines what her life could have been: “I was going into tech and stuff, my initial thing was to become a software developer. I could have done that by now, and been on that track.” Instead, though, she’s on “this really slow, sometimes a little daunting kind of path, [but] to a life that I want. You know, I’m pretty sure I want it, because I’m going after it.”

During its almost four minute runtime, what starts as a stripped-back, acoustic arrangement seems to evolve and expand, broadening out as Jolie’s voice becomes more urgent, grappling with her past selves and the expectations she finds placed on her. She attributes that breadth to producers and co-writers Julián Cruz (Dominic Fike, Kevin Abstract) and Willie Breeding (Jessie Murph, Willie Jones). Breeding in particular brings an audible stretching outwards that “makes it whole, makes it [feel] really full.” layering Jolie’s voice and guitar layered with subtle drums and slide-guitar, that take it out of the realm of R&B and bedroom pop, to the verge of country-style folk and back again. “Software Developer” has a feeling of warmth to it, as though Jolie were sitting right in front of her listener, confessing her anxieties with disarming clarity.

Those fears are, of course, relatable. Who hasn’t looked around them and worried that they’re doing something wrong, or too different to everyone else? Jolie’s well-aware that she isn’t alone, but she also knows that only she can chronicle her own life. “Not to sound conceited, but [the single, and the album] was all about me. Nobody else came to mind when I was creating it. It’s introducing me [without] thinking how I want to be perceived. I’m just… showing you what it is.”