Darren’s history began as one part of the global chart-smashing duo Savage Garden who had a string of unforgettable hit singles and two phenominally successful albums that soundtracked the 90’s pop generation. After disbanding in 2001, Darren Hayes went on to release three poineering solo albums – “Spin” (2002), “The Tension And The Spark” (2004), and “This Delicate Thing We’ve Made” (2007). With the release of each album Hayes has explored his creative musical desires, earning the praise of fans and critics alike and tallying over 26 million albums sales over his musical career to date.

What a long, strange, sometimes despairing, mostly magical trip it's been. The kid from the trailer parks of Brisbane who loved Star Wars (but not so much he didn't sell his precious collection of Star Wars toys to buy Christmas presents for his family) and Michael Jackson always knew he was going to make it, even after he turned down one of Australia's most prestigious stage schools to stay with his girlfriend: "She dumped me four months later; probably for the best since I turned out to be gay".

He flirted with journalism, he taught pre-school kids, but once he and Daniel Jones became Savage Garden and their self-titled debut album went 12X platinum in Australia, 7X platinum in the US and 4X platinum in the UK, the world was theirs. As experiences go, there can have been few more bitter-sweet. "I was airbrushed within an inch of my life, but at the end of it all, I'd written songs which people genuinely seemed to love". Then, in 2001, they imploded and, for Darren Hayes, things really became interesting.

2002's Spin ("It was supposed to do a George Michael; it didn't, but it did quite well") set things off nicely. Two years later, The Tension And The Spark was a poke in the eye to those who assumed Darren was merely a pop poppet. Dark, angry, but life-affirming, it wasn't a huge hit, but more to the point, "it saved my life. It was a record about overcoming depression. Consequentially it was very difficult to make."

In 2007, This Delicate Thing We've Made was the first on his own label Powdered Sugar and it was a double, both inspired and flawed. "I knew that, even as I was recording it," admits Darren, "but it's a record I had to make to get to where I am now."

Since then, near-silence, although the hardcore fans who ensured his most recent British gig at the Royal Albert Hall in 2007 was a sell-out know and adore We Are Smug, Darren's eccentric but rewarding download-only outing of 2009, ("it wasn't an official release; think of it as my Black Album," he chuckles). The final track, The Pressure, celebrated not merely the end of his San Francisco sojourn, but, for all the wonders of his work since Spin, the beginnings of musical renewal. After all, as Darren notes: "it's easy to be strange, there's no discipline and it's a bit of a cop out". It was time to get back to work and time to merge the boundary pushing with Darren’s ability to move people with a humdinging pop song.

Writing the new album has been a voyage of discovery, and in the end, he’s come home; the prodigal pop-son has returned. “There was a moment making this record where I found myself in the room with some of the world’s best pop songwriters. I put them up on a pedestal but didn’t realise it was a mutual admiration society. My peers were working with me because they had so much love for some of the songs I’d put out in the world. That was a light bulb moment for me. For many years I had been avoiding that kind of pure pop, but I realised I still had that competitive edge.” Hayes reflected.

“I would love to tell you that this album was a breeze to make, but the truth is it was extremely difficult,”
Darren says candidly. “It’s been the most difficult album to make since the first Savage Garden record… and I like to think that’s a great sign."