NEED TO KNOW
- 22-year-old Charlotte June brought The Voice judge Richard Marx to tears during her blind audition.
- Her emotion and encouragement to go on The Voice came from her mother’s diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
It’s the blind audition that gets Richard Marx so emotional that he can’t speak.
Adelaide singer Charlotte June, 22, has been dreaming of going on The Voice since she was eight years old. But she only got the courage to do it after her mother was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
“The specialist told us that we would probably have two to 10 years left with Mum – it would quite dramatically affect her life expectancy,” Charlotte tells TV WEEK. “Just thinking about doing my audition and her not being on the sidelines watching was so daunting to me.”
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She says her mother has always been on the sidelines at her gigs.
“I remember playing like a Katy Perry song or something and I look over and she’s just crying – like, filming me, crying. She’s always been moved by my music.”
Charlotte says her mother’s plane trip to Sydney to film the blind auditions was “a big challenge”, but because she’d watched so much of The Voice, she was able to “understand roughly” what was going on during filming.
“I think I probably did this audition at the latest that we possibly could have,” Charlotte adds. “I think if I had even done it this year coming, she probably wouldn’t have been able to come. I’m really, really grateful that I did it when I did it, for sure.”
At the blind auditions, when Charlotte explains why she sang the song she did, coaches Richard Marx and Kate Miller-Heidke both share their own stories and get tearful – particularly Richard, whose mother, jingle singer Ruth Marx, died in 2021.
“Bringing coaches to tears was just not something I thought was on the cards,” she says. “So that was definitely surreal.”
Charlotte has told her mother a couple of times recently that she’s going to be on TV on The Voice, but she says her mother has reached the stage where she’s “a bit vacant”.
“Whenever I tell her, ‘The Voice is airing on Sunday, my episode is going to be on Monday, I’m going to have a watch party with everyone,’ she’s just like, ‘Oh yeah.’ I don’t think she’s fully understanding it. But when she sees it on the TV, she will understand, I think, and have a big reaction. Hopefully.”
Catch The Voice on Monday and Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel Seven or 7plus.
