Off The Garden Path
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Former Savage Garden member Darren Hayes is pulling strings in the US.
None of this fuss was planned, insists Darren Hayes. All he ever wanted to do was quietly release a solo album, let the music talk for itself. But Hayes, who rocked the music world in October by announcing the break-up of Savage Garden, knows better than anyone else that for a pop star of his standing, that was never going to happen. Does anyone need reminding exactly how big a pop star we have in Darren Hayes? On any given day, life these days for the San Francisco-based singer might include U2's Bono calling him to sing on a song (the all-star remake of What's Going On). There's nothing left to chance here. It certainly helps that Hayes' debut solo single, Insatiable- to be released on January 14 but on radio since late last year- is undoubtedly another world class ballad. If Hayes' past strike rate for international hit singles is anything to go by, let alone Savage Garden's 20 million album sales, it's a safe bet that this new song will soon make a significant dent on charts around the world. "There are two or three ballads on there that are, you know, the ballads I am famous for," Hayes says in describing his debut solo album Spin (due in March). "But you can also dance to it. That's how I feel about this record. It's a spicier, edgier, sexier version of the parts that I contributed in Savage Garden. It lends itself to showmanship, all this music and the way I am putting it across". Before Hayes could get on with the album, there was the small matter of breaking up Savage Garden. Hayes admits that he and partner Daniel Jones were never as personally close as their images appeared. "We've never really been in each other's lives," he says. "I think that he is amazingly talented and I think he feels the same thing about me. And in order to preserve that amazing musical chemistry that we had when we worked together, it did involve some preservation and that preservation meant not a lot of intimacy. "You spark when you're in a room together and you're on stage. Now you do that for six or seven years and then you realise that you don't have a relationship where you call each other up. You don't do that." "Do I have voodoo dolls of him? No. I am absolutely so proud of everything we've acheived and I think he's amazing and I just think that at the moment it's such a positive thing that we're growing and moving on. I have no doubt in my mind that we will hang out again one day" Darren Hayes releases his debut single Insatiable on January 14. His debut album, Spin, will follow in March. |