Darren Hayes believes the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a “desire to dance”.
The 50-year-old singer is fascinated that he wasn’t the only artist to turn to a “disco” vibe for his lockdown album ‘Homosexual’ and thinks throwing shapes has always been a “soothing balm in times of crisis”, particularly amongst the LGBTQ+ community.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: “I think it’s interesting that we all – because I was making this during lockdown and I know Kylie [Minogue] made ‘Disco’ in lockdown. Jessie Ware also went through a disco phase too.
“To thread it back to queer culture, disco came out of queer underground culture and it is necessary joy. It’s funny how we had a pandemic and there was this desire to dance.
“If you look back to when AIDS was first appearing, disco was necessary. And then in the early 1990s, AIDS was decimating clubs and things – house music was huge. House is what I consider to be a relative of disco.
“And it’s so interesting that dance floors become a soothing balm in times of crisis, especially for queer people. Even in times when we couldn’t go out and we desperately we wanted to, we were making these dance records.”
Although the pandemic was a “horrible” time, the former Savage Garden star thinks we should celebrate the way people helped and supported one another.
He said: “Look we just faced three years of, let’s face it, almost an apocalypse. It was horrible. But we did it, we survived it and I think we don’t often talk about some of the more beautiful things we did all did for each other.
“We don’t often acknowledge it but I think that’s who we really are as people.”