June Jones Sucks: “I Used To Be In Denial About My Love For Pop Music”
Newly Eora-based artist June Jones has released her new single ‘Bubblegum’, and it’s as sugary sweet as you’d expect from the title.
Leaning into what she’s calling as her “Desire Era”, the song is completely devoid of pretence: the chorus is fun, fast, and flirty, as June sings about wanting someone to “chew me up and spit me out”. It’s pop music that’ll get your limbs flailing and give your voice a workout at her live shows.
Junkee caught up with June to mark the release of ‘Bubblegum’, and we spoke about accepting her love of pop music, embracing the nostalgia associated with time spent on the internet as a child and smashing through season after season of Below Deck. I’m not someone that can properly binge-watch TV (I get distracted far too easily), but I kind of wish I could. I’d love to throw some reality show on and switch my brain off for a while.
Cringe quote you used to live by?
I’m kinda “YOLO”-pilled, and I’ll use it to justify spending money on silly little things. Treats, if you will.
Anything you used to be wrong about?
I used to be in denial about my love for pop music. Even when I was only listening to “alternative” music as a teenager, I can see in hindsight that my favourite songs were always the poppiest ones. I used to love a best-of album!
Embarrassing internet habit?
For almost every night of the past couple of years, I’ve fallen asleep to either a video of someone playing a video game or a video essay about some strange nostalgic internet relic from my childhood like Neopets or Deviantart.
Ideal morning routine versus actual morning routine?
Ideally, I would start my day with a green smoothie, followed by a pilates class and a dip in the ocean, but in reality I look at my phone for an hour until I can muster enough executive function to forage for coffee and a bowl of yoghurt. I imagine this is kinda normal now.
Something very off-brand for you?
I’m not really sure what would be considered off-brand for me. I recently watched nine seasons of Below Deck in six weeks, but maybe that’s actually very on-brand? Somebody please tell me what my brand is.
Bad health decision?
In some ways, I think that being a musician is the worst health decision I’ve made, but from another angle it could be seen as the best one. To be fair, the worst one was probably taking up smoking at 13. But what was a suburban punk like me to do?
Worst procrastination habit?
I don’t know if I think it’s a terrible procrastination habit, but the most common one is probably playing video games. But I also think a lot of the work I do on music is the result of procrastinating things I should be doing in the real world.
June Jones’ new single Bubblegum is out now.
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Illustration credit: Matt Lauricella, @pigeonboyart