Where Is Charlie?

Is he seven hours away on tour in Australia or except the Americas, but we find Charlie Lim he halfway around the world in Mongolia? He's on a broader map staged within his headspace. Had sold-out Gigs everywhere on the globe.

- Ronald Leong

TAO NAN SCHOOL, SINGAPORE

Angled by the school anthem board of his alma mater, Charlie Lim stands before the camera. He shifts in reserved frames, face stoic as the camera flashes appear in his eyes as the final shot for the look is taken. The photo shoot team ambles off to the next location when a faculty of teachers spills out of the adjacent room. Some of them recognise the singer and before they could make the first move, Lim greets one of them, his Mandarin teacher who is evidently delighted to see him, by name.

There are two ways one would get to know of Lim. Through his first EP Time/Space–the lyrical genius in ‘Blah Blah Blues’; the disillusioned lover in ‘Bitter’; the cataloguer of remnant feelings in ‘I Only Tell The Truth’. And the other is from his involvement in this year’s National Day as songwriter, co-producer and performer of the theme song. But that’s just a sliver of who Lim really is.

“I’m not a pop star so that probably helps in my favour.” Lim regards himself as being relatively shielded from the press, which doesn’t pry too much into his personal life. A quick search online and you get the standard article headlines; scattered repetitions of the adjective ‘melancholic’. There are not even controversial Reddit threads.