Watching the rise of younger gay pop stars, the 50-year-old former Savage Garden singer felt grief for the youth he never had. He speaks about coming out, his mental health struggles and returning to music
n the cover of his new album, Darren Hayes sits proudly behind hot pink neon letters that spell out “Homosexual”. It’s a word that used to scare him, one that was hurled at him as an insult and, now, the title of his first record in 10 years.
“I did not want to be gay. I just didn’t,” he says of those late 90s days. “So [I thought] I’m going to take this word, and I’m going to turn it into the best compliment ever.” Hayes took that advice, and Taylor was “so amazing” in her response – but she didn’t immediately accept what it meant for their relationship. They swept his confession under the rug and kept going.
He and Taylor eventually split. While that separation was an immense loss, Hayes says “she was an incredibly beautiful person about it all”. He turned his heartbreak into songs such as I Don’t Know You Anymore on Savage Garden’s second album, 1999’s Affirmation. That LP was another monumental success, but he and Daniel Jones parted ways soon after its release – a splitDarren Hayes and Daniel Jones perform as Savage Garden at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
“I never expected my solo career to be as big as Savage Garden. I knew the lightning in the bottle aspect of what had happened to us,” he says. “But it became increasingly difficult to battle this feeling of being marginalised and that this is what happens when you do come out.”Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
It was a powerful personal reckoning, heightened by watching the #MeToo movement sweep the entertainment industry. But that grief and anger is also what brought him back to music.
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