“I’m just a singer,” was Darren Hayes’ typically understated response as The Masked Singer judging panel fangirled over his reveal during Tuesday night’s finale.
by Dami Im’s Snow Fox, but he was arguably the standout star of the season – not least because anyone with even a passing knowledge of pop from the past 30 years would’ve been able to pick his distinctive voice back in week one.
Hayes response was heartbreaking: That had been his second Mardi Gras performance, he told her. During his first, in the early noughties and before he came out publicly, “I hated who I was.”I think I speak for many a Masked Singer viewer when I say: We knew it was you from the very first note. Honestly, for lots of reasons, I didn’t think I would stay in the show. I was in a very tender place in my life, I didn’t really want to be away from home, and was thinking, ‘I’m sure I’ll just do one episode and then I’ll be guessed and flown home’.And there was a lot of facing my fears because without any of my ‘stuff’, I’m just inside what I called the Muppet costume. I don’t have any charisma. I don’t have any of my moves. I don’t have just any of the stuff that I’m used to falling back on.
And around that time, a lot of people that I loved had passed away. Sinead O’Connor passed away; Madonna almost died. A lot of people that I love gone, and I hadn’t been using my talent.But it was a confronting experience. It was an impossible position to sing in: That costume was so big that my arms had to be up above my head, which is impossible for your lungs.
I mean, I never had the fake girlfriend. I wasn’t that person. I never lied about who I was, but I never embraced it. But my second ? I mean, I looked like a flamingo, and I loved it! I was proud of the skin that I was in. I was turning 50. I said to the audience, ‘Thank you for loving me, even when I didn’t love myself’, as soon as I said those words, I then almost started to cry. And I was like, ‘God, don’t do that.