Darren Hayes
I look at this world we live in now where someone like Lil Nas X can push forward his true self, full of pride and self-love and have the chance to be loved for who he truly is. I was realising with great sadness that I didnt get that experience.Collection: Chance
Im a night owl so I tend to do a lot of my disconnecting past midnight. I love the feeling when the whole world has shut down for the day Im left to think and unwind without any interruptions.
When I recorded 'Unlovable', I had a lump in my throat. It was moving, but I wasn't sure if people wanted me to write those type of songs.
I was such an innocent and loving child. I lived in a dream world, I was obsessed with 'Star Wars', 'E.T', Michael Jackson and Madonna. I was big-hearted, emotional, and excitable.
I wanted to life the energy of a room when I walked into it and I wanted to take people away from the sadness of life and into a dream world.
Im sure most artists say this, but my favorite songs are not the hits.
I love the music video for 'Crash and Burn.' I was very excited to work with the director to make something stylistic and graphic.
Im an original trilogy kid. My experience with 'Star Wars' was the 70s, where George Lucas just completely changed the future of cinema.
I understand why there was a need for hope in 1977. Everything was very grim. So the idea that there could be a future of just infinite possibilities for young people who are about to go out into the world is an amazing feeling as a teenager.
Like a lot of my experience in seeing 'Star Wars' movies multiple times is really just to relive that feeling of being a kid.
My obsession with 'Star Wars' was an obsession with Ralph McQuarrie, as well. I loved the designs of the universe of 'Star Wars'.
I think anyone who creates anything, whether it's yourself as a writer, anyone - when you finish something, it's gone from being just your thing and it's out there, it's a great release.
I'd really love to go and do a chef's apprenticeship. I really would, I love cooking.
I'd love my degree from university, because I'm one subject away from having a Bachelor of Arts, which I know I can't use, but it annoys me.
I'm not someone who spends my money frivolously.
I was done with music and I became very cynical about the industry and Top 40 radio. I didn't even want to look at music for a while, and did a course in screen-writing.
I was living in San Francisco so I got back into yoga, bought myself a mountain bike and a puppy, and started living my life. And incidentally, I started making a record without realising it.
So after an album and tour are over I take 6 months to a year to do other things. Once I went to University and studied screen writing. Another time I learned to dance.
I started singing in my first band in 1992 so I'm coming up to 20 years in this business. That's a long time.
It was never going to be easy transitioning from a band to being a solo artist but I accepted that right from the beginning. I'm proud of my work and how I've evolved as artist.
I try to balance out my private life with my public job - I have learned to draw a very clear line in the sand and save up hugs and kisses and special moments with friends and family when I can because the job involves a lot of travel away from the people you love.
The thing with a band is it really is a marriage.
People dont get married by accident and they dont get divorced by accident.
There are reasons why musical relationships are magical and those same reasons are sometimes why they cant last.
Darren Hayes is an artist. Im a singer, I write songs, but the things I do have always been bigger than me.
I think of all emotions as just energy. If you see yourself separate from your thoughts, you can choose which ones you give meaning to.
When you hit someone back with understanding or love it stops the cycle of friction. Its not always easy to do, but when youre aware in the moment you have a choice to respond with love or hate. Its not rocket science.
Everyone else is too busy judging themselves to be thinking badly of you.
I love night time, it's the time I feel the world stops and my depression subsides.
Savage Garden was a roller coaster experience. By the second album I was living in New York, my whole life had changed. I was probably depressed.
People didnt expect pop music to be authentic. There were a lot of manufactured bands - of which I love.
Everyone advised me not to pursue a career in music and expected me to go into law. My dad told me I would end up living in the gutter if I pursued music, so I ended up at uni studying a teaching degree just to please him.
One of the biggest Savage Garden fans is one of my best friends of my life. She lives in Wales and her name is Mags. She started off as a fan, and shed always be at the front of Top Of The Pops. Then she met my sister who ran my fan club, they became friends.
I don't want to feel like I have to be a poster child for anything other than being a great artist. I don't take that on board as being my responsibility as a gay man, because I think it's really limiting.
For me as a kid growing up, I was gay and I didn't even realise it, let alone accept it. I was told I was gay before I could even imagine it. I was incredibly bullied - ferociously bullied - as a child.
I don't want to be a gay or a straight artist. I don't make gay records - I make records.
I'm out, I'm married, I'm a 'celebrity' and I still feel unsafe holding hands in many public situations. That's a reality.
I can tell you first hand - being able to marry the person I love and to live in countries where my marriage is recognized - probably saved my life.
I struggled tremendously with anxiety and depression related in part to my sexuality and growing up in a time when to be gay felt to me like a death sentence.
I learned to accept who I was in spite of living in a world that did not feel accepting to me.
If the audience wants to hear them, then I'm going to play them. I'll mess around with them a bit to keep it interesting, because it's frustrating when you see artists refusing to play their biggest hits.
I think that's what's really beautiful about music, that it is little pieces of your heart and soul.Collection: Beautiful
I was a completely normal kid, the school nerd. In Year 8 and 9 I got picked on. I was a freak- no one understood me. I was the kid who wanted to be abducted by ET. Then all the losers left in Year 10. But I was quite good at school, and very artistic. In Year 11 it turned around. I became one of the coolest kids in school. I was in school musicals- the kid who could sing. It was bizzare. I loved school. It's an amazing little world. The rules inside the school are different from the outside world.Collection: School
If you think I have a great voice and body, youll be shocked as hell seeing and hearing me in the shower.Collection: Thinking
I said (to Daniel Jones), 'You realise I'm always going to be The Guy From Savage Garden'. He said, 'How do you think I feel? I'm The Other One From Savage Garden!'Collection: Garden
If you've only had one relationship, how do you know you're good in bed?Collection: Bed
I think I have a reputation for being really serious. In interviews I use big words, but I'm just an emotional goofball. I play practical jokes all the time.Collection: Emotional
Let me give you a lesson about school. All the kids who were popular end up on the dole with babies. All the nerds end up as pop starsCollection: Baby
If you want me to be straight, gay, into monkeys, dating Kylie, whatever, I'm happy for people to project whatever onto me!Collection: Gay
I know it's not very masculine to say the moon is beautiful...but it is!Collection: Beautiful