FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Darren Hayes - Homosexual
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I wanted to revisit…
Darren Hayes’ fifth studio, Homosexual, for a few reasons. I missed it the first time around and did not give it a proper spin. My first experience of Hayes as a performer is through Savage Garden. The Australian duo has massive success in the 1990s, and he and Daniel Jones parted ways in 2001. I was not a massive fan of the duo, but I was always impressed by Hayes’ vocals and songwriting. I think his solo work is much more personal and rewarding. Perhaps his most important album to date, Homosexual was met with critical acclaim. Although not a lot of mainstream sites and papers in the U.K. reviewed it, it did make number six in the UK Independent Albums chart. With all songs on the album written composed and produced by Hayes, this is a real bid for independence. It is liberating and the sound of an artist claiming freedom. Released through Hayes’ label, Powdered Sugar, I think this is an album not just for Darren Hayes fans. Even though it is deeply personal and important to Hayes, it is broad and accessible enough so that it will appeal to a wide spectrum of music fans. I have dipped in and out of Hayes’ solo discography, but Homosexual struck me, not only because of the quality of the music, but because you can feel and hear how much it means to Hayes. He has thrown his heart and every ounce of his soul into making the album what it is.
I am going to come to a couple of positive reviews for an album that can be included among the best of last year. Released back in October, I want to start out by quoting sections of an interview with Rolling Stone Australia. Trigger warning to those who read the whole thing, as it might be upsetting for survivors of trauma – so do proceed with caution if this applies to you. I wanted to know more about Hayes’ career prior to Homosexual and how the album came about. Aside from the reader sympathising with the struggles Hayes has gone through and what he has wrestled with, the sense of relief and pride Hayes expresses having composed and played everything on his finest solo album to date is hugely satisfying:
“Savage Garden went on to become one of the most successful pop groups Australia has ever produced, selling over 12 million copies of their self-titled debut album – an album that just last year ranked at no. 9 on Rolling Stone AU/NZ’s ‘200 Greatest Albums of All Time’.
Darren Hayes was in his early 20s, married to his childhood sweetheart, and living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in Sydney’s Kings Cross writing that seminal Savage Garden album when his life changed irrevocably.
“Innocent, naïve Darren Hayes picked up a street mag that was like a gay magazine, and I remember just looking at the images and being simultaneously turned on and horrified that I was turned on by the images,” he recalls. “One day I remember venturing into a porn theatre, and I saw gay porn for the first time in my life. And somewhere in the shadows, people were having sex.”
Mortified, Hayes ran from the theatre to a nearby phone booth, where he called Lifeline to ask a phone counsellor for advice.
“Thankfully it was a gay person, and the person just said, really frankly and in the most Australian way: ‘Look, love – you need to go home and tell ya wife you’re gay’,” Hayes says.
By the time Savage Garden released that now-iconic music video for “I Want You”, he had told his wife, Colby Taylor, that he thought he might be gay.
“My coming to terms with my sexuality were completely shrouded in – honestly – suicidal thoughts,” Hayes admits. “If you listen back to the album Affirmation, there’s a song on there called “I Don’t Know You Anymore” – that’s because I came out to my wife, and I came out to both of our families, and I’d never even held a man’s hand.”
Flash forward to now, and at 50, Hayes is truly comfortable in his own skin, confident with his sexuality, and has begun his first album release cycle in a decade. The music video for Homosexual’s first single, “Let’s Try Being in Love”, is the visual representation of the anguish 24-year-old Hayes had felt coming to terms with his sexuality.
“I felt so aware that in one way there was this doorway to a possible future for me that was a way to be happy and to love myself and to be my true self,” Hayes explains. “But at the same time, I was going to have to destroy something I loved.”
Although Hayes didn’t truly come out to the rest of the world until he announced his marriage to husband Richard Cullen in 2005, he had spent years dropping clues into his music.
Hayes has composed, produced, performed and arranged everything on this album. He has released it on his own label, Powdered Sugar Productions, and although he is the first to admit he isn’t a Grammy-award winning producer – he doesn’t care.
“It means so much to me that every single sound that you hear on this record: I did that,” he explains. “Every lyric. Every synthesiser. Every guitar lick. Every EQ. Every decision was made by me with love, and I pored over it. And everything is symbolic; everything has a meaning and it all is like a hard wire from my brain straight to the person that’s going to listen to it.”
Hayes says there isn’t anything on Homosexual that is untrue, which, as a music fan himself, is something he expects from all artists.
“It’s so obvious when someone’s phoning it in,” he says. “And there’s been a couple of moments in my career – and I only mean a couple of songs – where I’ve phoned it in, and I cringe. I was phoning it in because I was depressed. I felt like I had a barrier up. because you don’t want someone to touch that place in you that’s so vulnerable.”
Hayes’ intention with this record was to make music that he loved first and foremost that hopefully people could connect to.
“It’s been fun seeing some really hardcore fans freak the fuck out, to be like, ‘Is there going to be a ballad?!’” Hayes laughs. “Because I love everyone and I love my fans, but I also subscribe to the idea that you can’t give people what they want – you have to give them what they need. And what they need is an artist that’s happy and is telling the truth”.
I am going to wrap things up with a couple of reviews. As much as it is liberating and personal, Metro Weekly noted how Homosexual is a celebration. It is an album that should be thought of as uplifting and powerful as much as it is revealing and soul-bearing. You do not have to identify with Darren Hayes and his struggle to be able to appreciate and bond with Homosexual:
“Hayes opens the album on a bright note with the thumping synths of lead single “Let’s Try Being In Love,” a song. His soaring falsetto reflects his stated purpose in the song: to “love the feminine” within himself. He gets more literal with the second single, “Do You Remember,” a straightforwardly lustful nostalgia trap of a song that frames desire for another body around some cheekily on-the-nose Gen-X reminiscing. “No cell phones/if you want to meet someone you had to leave your home,” Hayes sings.
With an upbeat pop sound and fun disco elements, the album’s production underscores the cathartic sense of nostalgia that Hayes indulges. With lyrics like, “It’s not a blessing and not a curse,” the peppy “Homosexual: Act One” and its coda “Homosexual: Act Two” sound almost like relics of the recent past when bouncy viral songs emphasizing the basic humanity of gay people proliferated. The lyrics are full of self-indulgent corniness, but somehow, in Hayes’ hands, it works. The grinning flippancy with which he tosses out lines like, “It’s not correctable/It’s homosexual!” is absolutely infectious.
Hayes avoids the prudish reluctance around sex and the sanitized view of the gay experience that marked so much of the straight-facing material he nods toward in the two title tracks. Notwithstanding his 17-year marriage to the man who was the muse for “Let’s Try Being In Love,” Hayes is no stranger to gay sadness, and nowhere is this more apparent than on “Hey Matt.”
Hayes drops his voice and indulges in over nine minutes of tortured angst, replete with self-aware reflections on the damage that can be done by repressing desire. The sentiment is driven home in the standout line, “My daddy issues still ache.”
The runtime of “Hey Matt” sets it apart as a bit of an outlier, but not by much. “All You Pretty Things” and “Birth” clear the 8- and 7-minute mark, and are incidentally two of the strongest tracks in an album that has few lackluster moments.
He is a seasoned pop artist, after all, and is at the top of his game on Homosexual, stretching the register of his voice between his bright, well-known falsetto and the low, maudlin register he adopts on “Hey Matt” and again on the latter half of the album.
Captivating as it is, the upbeat tone Hayes strikes on the album does not prevent him from exploring some dark places, taking a scalpel to the origins and nature of trauma on “Nocturnal Animal” and indulging in some visceral imagery over some tense industrial pop riffs of the album’s closer, “Birth.”
His dedication of disco-inflected “All You Pretty Things” to the victims of the Pulse massacre is a sobering reminder that the issues of the past are still the issues of the present — the fight for rights is far from over, and winning them is not a foregone conclusion.
The practice of quietly closeting artists will probably remain too prevalent in the music industry and in entertainment writ large for a while. But the proud, endearing gayness of Homosexual feels like a refreshing middle finger to a self-congratulatory entertainment industry complex that still has a lot more catching up to do than it lets on.
Hayes is well aware he is far from the first artist to reclaim a word used as a slut against him, but in his capable hands, the album succeeds beautifully as a full-throated celebration of what it means to him to be a raging homosexual”.
I will end with another review. Renowned for Sound also had their say about an album from last year that should have got more attention from the press in the U.K. I think, on a musical level, it is a wonderful album that has true standalone moments. Singles like Let’s Try Being in Love and non-singles Hey Matt and All We Are Alchemists keep you coming back again and again:
“Darren Hayes first album in over a decade, Homosexual, sets to re-write the gay-shaming trajectory of his life by reclaiming his homosexual identity with pride. Hayes laces the fourteen-track record with upbeat pop melodies and synthesisers right out of the eighties, to tell a heartbreakingly honest account of his past struggles with his sexuality, self-identity and homophobia.
It is known that during Hayes’ well-celebrated Savage Garden years and beginning of his solo career he was forced to hide his true sexuality by music execs, even being made to re-shoot his debut solo single Insatiable, back in 2002 for fear of being too ‘gay’. Fast forward to 2022, and Hayes is taking back control of his music on Homosexual, with him impressively producing, composing, arranging and playing every instrument on the record.
Hayes draws inspiration from 80s icons such as George Michael, Madonna and Prince to create a nostalgic album featuring fun pop and disco elements. This can be especially seen on the Prince-inspired track Music Video, which features a classic Prince-style guitar solo and varispeed vocals. Hayes even references popular eighties song titles throughout the track such as Billie Jean and Love is a Battlefield, really helping to successfully evoke the eighties.
To begin with, Hayes opens the album in a light-hearted place with Let’s Try Being In Love, full of 80s synths and falsettos, before moving into darker territory throughout the record. On Hey Matt, Hayes lives out his dark suicidal fantasy, matched by his much deeper vocals, and touches upon his childhood trauma on Nocturnal Animal over pop riffs. What keeps the listeners engaged is Hayes’ unique style of contrasting his sad tales of despair with cool eighties-sounding grooves that could be played in clubs.
A highlight of the album is Hayes’ special tribute on All You Pretty Things for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Throughout the track Hayes can be heard repeating ‘Dance to remember them’ as a way to celebrate and honour the lives of the lost. Hayes then cleverly turns the second half of the track into an 80s dance beat which could be mistaken for a Patrick Cowley and Sylvester collab. The song helps to create a safe space for individuals to dance and celebrate club culture, a fitting way to honour those that have passed in such a positive way.
Hayes has really gone above and beyond for his first album in over a decade, from creating the record all by himself to covering his past trauma with his most authentic, genuine lyrics. Hayes avoids any downbeat, sad melodies and puts his efforts into creating a modern dance album which celebrates the eighties and his sexuality. However, it is a sad realisation learning about what Hayes has gone through his life because of his sexuality, especially when Homosexual comes at a time when LGBTQ+ artists are now celebrated for their queerness, such as Lil Nas X and and Sam Smith. Hopefully Homosexual has allowed Hayes to find peace with his past, which he truly deserves”.
An album that I think people should check out, Darren Hayes’ Homosexual is the sound of an artist truly happen in his own skin – and someone who has reached a place he has tried to get to for many years now. It was a risk writing and producing all the songs, as the weight of responsibility falls solely on his shoulders of the album is a failure. As it is, Homosexual is a triumph! As we are now in 2023 – and following the success of Homosexual -, it will be interesting to see…
WHERE Hayes heads next.