Jobin is well known in the Dallas music scene by this name. Though she’s reverted to her brunette roots, her once-vibrant blue hair, icy blue eyes and the blue-toned visuals on her socials were enough to forever associate her with the color blue. But her sincere and illustrative lyricism, paired with the raw emotions that drive it, is what make the Blue Girl persona resonate on a deeper level.
Jobin deduces that the “Blue Girl” image came from a personal effort to embrace the “blues” — to find love for the melancholic side of herself just as much as she does on the good days.
In a way, though, Jobin can also physically trace the “blue” motif back to a matching tattoo she has with an ex. The phrase, “baby blue,” inscribed in ink on her back, comes attached to a mix of emotions. Once a term she cherished, it now serves as a reminder of a rough relationship. The emotions that came from the end of the relationship became a catalyst for her to write her own songs.
“I'm taking something that almost has a negative connotation for me now … and I’m building something out of it,” Jobin says. “The more you make, the more you find yourself.”
For the Blue Girl, music is a reclamation of her melancholy but also a means of processing her emotions and life experiences. Writing and producing music has become her most honest creative outlet, and it's a process that often surprises the artist.
“Sometimes the way things go together, you know, it's so unexpected,” Jobin says. “It's almost like having that 'Aha' moment, you know, when you write a certain lyric, or you put a certain melody over a guitar progression, and it's like, oh, this thought or this feeling I've struggled with for months — I have a grasp on it now. It makes sense, and I didn't even kind of consciously try to make sense of it. It just came out and made sense of itself."
Much of Jobin’s music draws inspiration from relationships.
"I think I make music to make sense of life," she says. "I think it's complicated. I think music is a way that I connect to myself, and I think without music I wouldn’t know where these thoughts and these feelings would leak out.”
The single “Empty House,” which was released last year, illustrated the feeling of knowing and dreading that a relationship is coming to an end. Often leaning into imagery-centered phrasing in her lyrics, lines such as, “It’s not an empty house, see a blue light on” and “Shutting me out, I’ll see stars as my ceiling” vividly transport listeners into Jobin’s mental space at the time of writing.
Another single released last year, “I Fantasized,” focuses on the hopeful beginnings of a new romance. While the downbeat “Empty House” deconstructs itself instrumentally at certain moments, “I Fantasized” beautifully communicates the steady rush of emotions through an instrumental build-up.
The song starts out fairly stripped down with Jobin’s vocals and guitar alone, mirroring the experience of feeling reserved around the other person, but knowing that the strong feelings they have for each other are shared. Slowly, the tempo progresses, another lamenting guitar and a steady drumbeat drive the song forward as it continues to build. The song reaches a delicately layered and lush climactic peak, capturing the shared intensity of newfound feelings.
Chlöe Jobin, Producer
Though Jobin has proven herself to be an exceptional lyricist, she is also a skilled producer by trade and has put an extensive amount of time into homing in on that side of her musicianship. After working at an Austin studio, she spent a portion of that time at The Kitchen, a recording studio based in Dallas. There, she interned and later worked under the mentorship of John Painter.Painter is the owner of the establishment and a well-known Dallasite who has worked with stars Erykah Badu, Andre 3000 and Wiz Khalifa in his studio.
As the youngest person working there (and mainly self-taught,) Jobin recalls her time at The Kitchen as a multicolored experience that made her quite versatile in the studio.
“I would say that in working there, I really gained so much confidence in myself,” Jobin says, "having a mentor really kind of drill into my brain that there isn't a right or wrong way [to operate in the studio]."
Being a younger woman in a male-dominated field pushed her to stand her ground in the studio as well.
“I would say people are used to men running sessions and being their producer/engineer, and it just kind of made me have to be confident in what I knew, and confident enough to guide other people in the right direction as well,” Jobin says.
Working in a collaborative setting at The Kitchen also had an impact on her methods of producing her own projects. Though working in a Dallas hotspot brought many new collaborators, Jobin eventually found her footing in taking all that she learned from The Kitchen to her very own home studio.
Outside of the studio, Chlöe Jobin has plans to return to North Texas venues and to expand her performance locations to venues in Oklahoma and a few hours south near Austin. She'll be performing at Jambaloo, a free festival spanning venues across DFW. You can catch her and her new band at Andy’s Bar in Denton in February. With more singles on the horizon, Chloe Jobin continues to transform her "blue" into something vibrant, profound and uniquely her own.
Chlöe Jobin as a solo project has found that she feels most comfortable recording in her own space, where she can have full creative control of her output. Recording vocals on her own has also become a process that she looks forward to.
“When I was working at studios, I would have people help me track my vocals, which, ever since working at home, that's just become a very spiritual experience for me, I track all my vocals by myself," Jobin says. "I feel like I get into it, like I get more in touch with myself when I'm alone in a room and I'm the one pressing record rather than having someone else do it. I really feel like I'm giving my most authentic vocal performance when I'm alone in a room, and it's not always been that way. I've just found in recent years that is truly where I feel like what I hear in my head and what is coming out of my mouth is most aligned.”
