As one half of Brisbane supergroup Savage Garden Darren Hayes sold 23 million albums worldwide. The 35 year old singer/songwriter has had one of the most incredible careers of any Australian performer of our time - but it has not been without its share of dramas, as witnessed in the behind-the-scenes DVD ‘Too Close for Comfort’ released last December.

Hayes came out earlier in 2006 a month after a Civil Partnership ceremony with his lover Richard Cullen and has since increasingly spoken out about being gay. He has a lot to say about the challenges he faced growing up in blokey Brisbane in an alcoholic home, and coping with stardom as an adult, when his sexuality started bursting at the seams.

"I spent the first 10 years of my public life creating this myth. That's what it was," Hayes told the SMH. "The music was the only true thing. Everything else was a contrivance. Not at all from a cynical or Machiavellian point of view; it was just a survival mechanism. Like most pop stars I hated myself, needed something, dyed my hair a certain colour, acted a certain way, imitated people. You can join all the dots and work out where I got to."

The artist’s pain is there for all to see with Darren Hayes but rather than it being a squeamish experience where you want to tell them to shut up, it’s one where the switched-on to it simply realise that the artist is using their experience in celebrity as a revelation, posting their findings into the world for the benefit of others.

While his solo work has a way to go yet to match the runaway success he had as part of Savage Garden, his recent releases like ‘On the Verge of Something Wonderful’ from the album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’ show that the spark of Savage Garden is increasingly present in his own music.

He headlined the London Gay Pride at Trafalgar Square in June this year, performing his tracks ‘I Want You’ and ‘On the Verge of Something Wonderful’.

By Danny Corvini