Charlotte June has pined for a picture-perfect romance on Longing Reality, a guitar-driven ballad that serves as the singer’s fourth single of 2023.
Opening with the warmth of acoustic strums, the track rightfully forefronts June’s vocals, so intimate it’s as if she’s singing them directly to you.
Taking cues from the raw honesty of fellow vocalists like Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo, June anchors her delivery in an angelic simplicity, which makes the vulnerability of her songwriter all the more pure.
June elsewhere adds texture to her vocals with airy backing harmonies, and allows her voice to flit between heavenly ascendence and brooding delivery with finesse.
While this singer-songwriter quality means June’s range is an instrument unto itself, Longing Reality makes ample room for enrapturing production, courtesy of Lucky Yu and guitarist Wesley Jay.
The latter’s handiwork affords Longing Reality a spareness and simplicity, with lullaby-like chords that allow the track to travel to heavenly retreats.
The result, as punctuated by June’s effortless voice, makes Longing Reality feel like a sonic escape, delivered with a kind of delicacy that coaxes you into its immaculate world.
This ethereal quality is perfectly suited to June’s lyricism, which finds her fantasising about an idealised world in which a picture-perfect romance can flourish.
There’s a bittersweetness to the storytelling here, since June is both imagining the high points of this romance and lamenting their intangibility. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she pines in a soaring melody, “if this was a memory instead of fantasy.”
Like a true singer-songwriter, June’s strengths lie in her imagery, as she paints moving portraits of enjoying sunsets and playing guitar with a phantom partner.
It’s the kind of diaristic storytelling you’d expect from an artis ten years’ her senior, but Longing Reality is doubly impressive June’s relative greenness in the scene.
While music has been an integral part of the Adelaide artist since she was six, Longing Reality is only the fourth-ever official single to her name released by Charlotte June this year.
The previous three — EGO, Priority List and SUGAR HIGH — arrived earlier this year, with plans for future releases and the promise of a debut EP on the horizon.
In the meantime, get swept up in the sonic reverie that is Charlotte June’s new single Longing Reality below.
