Darren Hayes -- Magic in the Room (ourbrisbane.com, August 3)
		As he enjoys chart action right around the globe with his debut solo album Spin, Darren Hayes is the first to admit it's all one big game. From the first-class flights, video shoots and glitzy album launches through to awards nights and TV interviews, Hayes is well aware how easy it is to get caught in the trappings of pop stardom. Talk to Hayes and it soon becomes obvious he's avoided falling under the limelight's spell, something he quickly attributes to his formative years growing up in Logan.
"I'm glad I have this [background] in me because you could get caught up in so much bullshit – and it is so much bullshit, ultimately," Hayes says of the industry. "I still think growing up in Logan and having that perspective about money and class systems was really lucky. Ultimately we were really poor. There was a period in my life when we were living in a caravan park and were bankrupt, but I never felt poor. I never really thought about it till I grew up and started paying the rent and thinking ‘God, we had it tough’. It's given me a lot of appreciation and perspective on what I do." For the kid who once worked behind the counter at Woody's music store, he's gone from pushing chart-topping CDs to making them. "In some ways it doesn't feel like I've changed at all. Sometimes I feel like my life is so surreal, but all I know is when I was the kid behind the counter at Woody's, I dreamed about this. I remember walking into that store in awe when I was 11 – and I used to be intimidated by the people behind the counter. I remember finally getting a job there and thinking I was the shit [laughs]." Spin looks set to replicate that same feeling for Hayes, following Top Five debuts in Australia and the UK and similar chart success elsewhere. Recorded in his home of San Francisco, Hayes co-produced Spin with Grammy Award winner Walter Afanasieff (Ricky Martin, Savage Garden) as well as co-writing 35 songs for the project with the likes of Rick Nowels (Madonna, Dido), newcomer Greg Bieck and Afanasieff. Darren says he wrote that many songs so as not to limit the songwriting process. "There was a part of me that was a little terrified to do it. I had to write the first 12 or 15 songs thinking they were the shit – the best things I'd ever done. Fifteen or 20 songs later, I looked back and thought ‘God, I thought I had it in one there’, but I didn't. I needed to have that kind of perspective and not be calculated about it and see whatever came out. "I don't care about justifying it, but I think people have always assumed that I just wrote lyrics, but I'm actually a melodist, so sometimes I can have complete songs in my head. I'll sit down at a keyboard and show someone a chord progression or bass progression and they'll arrange that with me. "I think the thing with doing a solo record is that you can take more liberties and have more fun. It can be more personal and you can fool around with irony or whatever. When you're writing in the context of a band, you have a responsibility to represent a collective, but on a solo record you can get a bit cheekier." Freed from the band constraints of Savage Garden, Hayes is certainly exploring new sides of his persona, as demonstrated on the saucy album track ‘Dirty’. He does admit, though, that he has regrets about the way the Savage Garden split was handled. "I really think any ‘mishandling’ was a media thing. We had our own issues internally, but there were never any animosity – it wasn't an ugly thing at all. The reality is it made a sexy story to pit the two of us against each other and it just spiralled. I found myself defending accusations and it became something I had to stop doing. Now it makes so much sense to me. There would have never been a third album no matter how much of a hiatus we would have taken. Music changed, we were changing and if you listen to this record, it's obvious I had this record inside me somewhere and it had to be released." On the subject of reminiscing, Hayes quickly recalls the circumstances surrounding the Time Off classified which brought Savage Garden together. "I was at Uni at Lucia at the time and I used to read Time Off all the time, just getting into bands and stuff. I did well at school and was the first kid ever to get into university in the history of my family. It was a big deal and I felt all this pressure. I remember being in line in a library and someone saying to me ‘Why are you always criticising the course and why aren't you happy?’ and I said ‘Because I really want to be in a band’. They said ‘Well, why aren't you?’. "I remember being so offended that I went away and ripped out my Time Off and found Daniel's ad and thought ‘I'm going to do this’. I remember going into the audition and I was scared out of my brains. I was the last person and had no experience – I was just a kid who'd sung in school musicals. I sang for them and everything changed – there was a magic in the room. I knew that everything was going to change forever – and boy did it!" Spin is out on Roadshow Music.