Originally written on 05 June 2009 for member's of 'Delicacy' Darren's official fan club at www.darrenhayes.com

As I type this, it’s Thursday night and I’ve just had what I call ‘Happy Love Day’ which is my way of describing a ‘date day’ with my lovely.   It was much needed because I’ve had 2 weeks straight of working hard on music and my brain is mush.   Nothing like some McLovin’ to make things better.   We love what we do and work so hard that it’s easy to take time together for granted.  So I sort of insist on some one on one time out of the house just to make us feel like a couple.

Right – so it’s been a lot of hard work.
To go back to a couple of weeks ago, I did a charity performance for the songwriter Rick Nowels at Home House in London.  It was for an organization, which raises money to allow children from economically, challenged backgrounds to have access to a basketball team with equipment, coaches and uniforms.   I did it for Rick simply because he asked and it was a delightful night, the highlight being seeing Belinda Carlisle perform her laundry lists of hits.  Loved it.  But it left me rather exhausted.

What many people probably don’t realize about me is that I have a love hate relationship with singing.   I love it for all the obvious reasons, but I’m always terribly nervous before I sing and then physically exhausted afterwards.  Combine that with the fact that I don’t have the most robust voice – in spite of taking care of it.  So I’m very susceptible to throat infections and general fatigue.    Which means my life is often in slavery to singing – not drinking alcohol (or rarely) – not drinking caffeine and mostly not using my voice unnecessarily (not going out to loud restaurants or bars, even not laughing loudly or screaming with joy).
Then there’s the constant water need.  Over 2 litres a day.  Preferably 3 or 4!  So it is an ordeal to say the least lol.

And I’m always knackered after a gig, as I was the day after this one and the day that Robert Conley arrived from Australia to work with me on writing and recording songs for my album.    But I guess it put me in a cool headspace.

At first we were both quite nervous.    We hadn’t written a thing together since writing ‘How to Build a Time Machine’ really.    And in that time Robert had seriously developed as a major songwriter in Australia being signed to Sony/ATV publishing and co writing the most played song on Australian radio of this year (Axle Whitehead’s ‘I don’t do surprises’).  He’d become more accomplished and the dynamic has definitely changed.  But for the better I would say.

He’s got a great sense of what is and what is not appropriate at radio which although is never my consideration, it’s nice to hear someone’s take on whether or not something is necessary or not.  And I like that aspect to the songwriting at the moment.  It balances out my desire to just go off on a zillion tangents.   But the tangents are still there.  I can’t help it!

The first song we worked on was a track I’ll call ‘N’.  It is a turbulent song about, well I won’t tell you what yet.   But I will say the entire album is about relationships and it’s very much first person and not metaphorical in the way my last album was.   So that song was written and recorded (in sort of 60% quality) in 2 days.

The next song we started to work on I’ll call ‘S’ and we had a basic production and melody sorted out and then something bizarre happened.   Our session was harpooned by an urgent request by a publisher and Syco, the Simon Cowell label, for me to attend a song writing camp to write tracks for the big 3 records they have coming out this year.   As I’ve probably explained, I’ve been doing work for this label a bit this year – and it’s a fun opportunity and one that doesn’t come along often so I had to do it.  But it was strange ripping myself out of ‘album’ mode and back into someone else’s.  But I’m sort of used to that on this record and in fact it’s what I’ve liked about it because I’m slowing building the house and I get to go off and garner new perspectives and bring back bits and pieces I like to the table.

Anyhoo – there were some amazing writers there.   Each day I worked for at least 16 hours and it was truly exhausting.   By the 3rd day I was ruined and came back to work with Rob and could hardly sing.
So for the next few days I was writing my melodies by whistling instead of singing, and then eventually playing them note-by-note on the piano which I rarely do. 

But once again, really nice happy accident because the guitar sessions that Steve Young did, only really had simple melodies to bounce off and it made for a really lean and tight use of arrangement.   You could clearly hear what did and what did not support the melody.

Anyway to regress, the song ‘S’ is the song about messing things up in a major way.  It is dramatic and sweeping and I can imagine the album opening with it.  I’ll never over explain these songs as I always want your own interpretations – but there are many layers to these songs.   Sometimes I think people might listen and think ‘oh my god Darren’s relationship is breaking down’.  Because many of the songs discuss friction and yearning and loss.  But that’s obviously not the case at all.  I’m using the songs to vent about everyone and everything but using love songs as the medium.   I think songs about relationships and love are what define me – and the language through which most of my therapy is done.   So on this record, I’d day that’s what I mean about ‘return to form’ or ‘pop’.    It’s about universal themes. 

On to the subject of ‘Pop with a capital P’ I want to stop saying that about this record because you might be expecting me to make a sugary pop record and it couldn’t be further from that.   It’s more ‘Bat For Lashes’ than it is ‘Lady Ga Ga’.  It’s pop in terms of melody and accessibility but it’s definitely deep and layered and interesting.

Right, on to the 3rd song.  It’s a song I started writing with Steve Young when he played me a chord progression he’d written.    I had tears in my eyes when I first heard it over 6 months ago and I’ve been promising him ever since that I’d write a song to it.   Robert and I took Steve’s chords and turned them into verses, then he and I wrote a chorus progression and added that to the song.   The result is probably the album title track (but honestly you never know – with at least a year away from release and more songwriting planned I have no idea what will and wont’ make the final cut).   But I can say it’s exactly how I hoped it would be – and is full of e-bow guitar.   Just gorgeous. 

Right now I’m taking a week off from everything and next week am doing some writing for more ‘other people’.   I won’t be working on my album again until Shave gets here in July.   So I’ll update more about the progress when he touches down.
There are 11 finished songs in the can now – with another 3 planned to be finished in July and then more writing planned after.   The goal is still 20 songs so choose a definitive album from.   Wish me luck!

xxD