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Photo: Maris Jones

If an ex who left you with emotional bruising and months worth of therapy chalks up the experience as a “growing opportunity,” this is the song for you. The first we’ve heard from her since the 2022 EP Shaking Hands with Elvis, Allison Ponthier returns with the sobering single “Character Development.”

Relationships are humankind’s most potent catalysts for growth, especially the ones that cut deep. But when you’re treated like dirt and filed under the learned lessons folder, it’s enough to make a cold heart bitter. Ponthier gives words to a feeling that has yet to be acknowledged publicly, charging it with so much emotion you can’t help but grieve with her.

The talented singer-songwriter has never been anything but unabashedly honest, singlehandedly upholding the sensitive artist narrative. She reaches into the deepest folds of her hurt and spills it out in song, earning her praise as an “artist with seemingly unlimited potential” from Billboard. 

Written alongside Grammy nominees K.Flay and Tommy English, the grit in the song’s lyrics is what makes the moment so potent. “I’m not your teacher, your mother, your savior,” sings Ponthier as a reclamation of power, a demand to be seen as whole rather than a cog in a machine. “‘Character Development’ is about the people I’ve encountered who have treated me poorly, to then turn around and say that learning from that experience has made them a better person,” the singer shares. “No one should be made to feel like they have to be a casualty or compromise themselves for someone else’s growth.”

The single’s stunning music video, co-directed by Brooklyn-based visual artist Maris Jones, reimagines antiquated love stories with a knight in shining armor and damsel in distress. Following the visual’s unraveling, we see something much more queer and empowering be born, which centers the protagonist and gives permission for us to write our own love stories, too.

It’s difficult to watch the source of your suffering bask in a post-enlightenment glow when you know it was at your expense, but Ponthier has a way of extracting the humor by exposing the whole truth. “Character Development” is a reminder that we can never truly control the character we play in another’s story, but we can certainly control who we are in ours, and in her narrative, Ponthier was certainly not going to let the villain get away with it.

Watch the "Character Development" video below: