SameSame.com.au ~ Inside Out Australia

Darren Hayes - On The Verge OfSomething Wonderful

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 24th October, 2007

A lot is happening for Darren Hayes at the moment. The 35 year old singer/songwriter was named one of the Same Same 25 earlier this month, he’s turned the camp dial up to twelve with his recently released album This Delicate Thing We’ve Made, and has also been traveling around the country with his highly theatrical Time Machine Tour.

So far, Darren’s loving his new sound, his new perspective, and the changes that they’ve brought with them “I think over the past couple of years I’ve been unintentionally spring cleaning my audience because everytime you change you keep some people, you lose some people and you turn some new people on,” he says. “These days, the crowd is slowly being filled with people who would never have listened to my music before. There’s this emerging gay audience who feel quite intrigued by where I am going and what it is I am saying.”

Darren’s feeling more comfortable in his skin these days since coming out last year and marrying his partner and best friend Richard. “It took me a long time to work out who I was as a gay man. It took a long time for the penny to drop that I was gay, it took me a long time to work out who I was within the community and also within the very limited, cliched, marginalisation of what the mainstream media thinks of what gay is.”

While Darren lost a substantial chunk of his fan base when he went solo, he describes those who have stayed with him as “very loyal”. Now that he’s running his own record label, he’s very much in the driver’s seat, and he’s loving it.

“I feel sorry for some young artists who are cash cows. I was a cash cow, I was a goose that laid golden eggs… I really rebelled eventually, it was a shitfight and I won,” he says of his time with Savage Garden. “It’s very hard to maintain integrity as a mainstream artist and not sell out. It’s much easier to give people what they want, rather than what they need.”

Earlier this month Darren was named one of the Same Same 25. “I am really chuffed and honoured that you guys would consider me,” he says. “I think growing up I never had anyone to look up to, which is why my coming out and my struggle to accept who I was was so difficult because I didn’t have anyone to relate to. I feel quite honoured because I fought so hard to be comfortable with who I am, and I love the idea that in living my life I might give someone else an example of how you can be happy and be successful, and yourself.”

With the federal election mere weeks away, Hayes, like many of us, is crossing his fingers for a labor government.

“I would never vote for John Howard, my endorsement is Kevin. At the end of the day I believe in unions, health care, civil liberties and equal rights. I think of Australia as quite a forward thinking nation of quite considerable social concsiousness. I want us to have a leader that continues that push, that makes Australia the rebel that it’s always been, whether it’s for the environment or Aboriginal issues,” he says.

“I’d love to see civil partnerships recognised here. I think the recognition that comes from acknowledging those relationships is a basic human right. It’s quite an anomaly that the country at the moment doesn’t recognise civil partnerships.”

Darren says that getting hitched and having it legitimised in the eyes of the law had a tremendous effect on how he felt about himself. “I feel that gay people from my generation have had to live with a certain amount of shame and there’s something extraordinary that comes from this piece of paper that actually makes you feel legitimised and respected and acknowledged.”

Darren Hayes’ This Delicate Thing We’ve Made is in stores now.