14 March 2026, Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA

Well, this was without doubt the most extraordinary concert experience I’ve ever had at the legendary Troubadour, where so many extraordinary things have happened in music history. I have been there countless times in the past 29 years, and most LA music people that I know have been going to the famed venue for twice that many years. I had never previously been to see a pure pop performer there, one with all the moves, given that the venue entices me mainly for introspective minstrel types, but I’ve certainly been there for big bands and tribute shows with more people on stage than could reasonably fit. I had never felt so overwhelmed by a full house there before, although I am sure many of the sold-out shows I have been a part of in that tiny room were just as packed and perhaps as frenetic in their own ways.

At Darren Hayes’ show last Saturday, the first of two sold-out nights, it was about the energy, the astonishing audience, and the emotion going both ways from stage to audience and back, which felt extra unique and remarkable. I had a strong feeling it would be that way months ago when Darren announced he would be doing these two shows at the Troubadour, after three years off the stage while very publicly going through a lot of pain – physical and emotional – and grief and more. Having followed him closely on social media after reading (actually listening to) his deeply moving memoir, Unlovable, and having considered how much he had been through since I interviewed him in 2004 for Songwriters Speak, realising how little I had understood what he had been through even back then, how the hints he was dropping when he spoke to me about stories behind songs had much deeper tunnels I could have explored, how much more profound those few years were as one-half of Savage Garden, Australia’s greatest ever world-famous pop duo, than had even seemed in the midst of the grief he was feeling after its split, I knew when he announced these shows that I had to be there.

So did the other fans who were lining up in the hot sun, some since that morning, to get into the standing-room venue, including a hundred or so who had paid extra to get in one hour ahead of everyone else so they could be closer to the stage in a room when we are all quite close to the stage. People had come to LA from everywhere. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe, Canada, Mexico and all points USA. When I arrived a couple hours ahead of door time the line was already long. I chatted with different people to find out where they had come from, how long they had loved Darren (almost all since the Savage Garden years in the late ‘90s), how they felt about him. It would have made a great short documentary. I thought about my friend Melissa, who I worked with at the Biennial International Music Festival in Brisbane, who first played Savage Garden to me in the festival boardroom in April 1997 while we were assigning media and VIP tickets, explaining to me that they were local Brissy boys and that they were a big deal already. I had no real affinity for electronic-sounding pop love song music back then, but only a few years later, when I had worked on events in my role with Australian music organisation APRA where Daniel Jones had regularly been in attendance, and then visited Daniel to talk about songwriting for my book, ahead of sitting down with Darren in London a few weeks later, I had a much better appreciation for their genius and their success. But I had never seen them perform live, or been in an audience for any of Darren’s subsequent solo tours.

So at last I was.

The two shows had sold out in something like 15 minutes, it was crazy, and then the anticipation for months was palpable just through Darren’s regular, open, vulnerable, excited, nervous posts. Darren posts constantly about himself, about the things he believes in (especially crazy US politics), about his dog and about being in Santa Monica. For all I know he lives on my street, or around the corner, but I never see him on my wanderings. I’m not a die-hard fan looking for him; I am someone that had a meaningful conversation with him many years ago and was impressed by his gentility and thoughtfulness and then was floored by the revelations in his book about the depths of hardship and despair he had been through before becoming a pop star, and his honesty about how fame and fortune do not erase the memories or make one immune to further despair. Trauma is trauma.

The songs don’t necessarily all reflect that, they were and still are sumptuous pop masterpieces, especially those he wrote with Daniel such as the gorgeous “Truly Madly Deeply” and the breathtaking “I Want You”. I mean, who can resist a lyric like “Sweet like a chic-a-cherry cola”?

But one song I am really glad he sang, “Two Beds and a Coffee Machine”, which he had told me in 2004 was the most emotional song he had recorded during the Savage Garden time, and which I had included in the Songwriters Speak anthology double CD that a record company released to showcase my book, had taken on far deeper meaning for me once I heard him read his memoir on Audible. Because his mother had many times checked into motel rooms with her children to escape the brutality of his abusive father and those family dynamics, so much more complicated than just that context, or that song, inform every part of who he was and the middle-aged man he is now.

Thirty years on from forming Savage Garden, he is still incredibly attractive, the voice is still pristine and the grooves are irresistible. The Michael Jackson and INXS inspirations from very early on were still evident and I was feeling a distinct Giorgio Moroder vibe and then he even broke into a few bars of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and I could have listened to Darren sing that all night, really. It was a terrific, slightly too-short show. There were backing vocals that didn’t seem to be coming from his energetic players on stage, but whether there was a full backing track in use or just enough to make the songs sound like their original recordings, or none at all, I can’t be sure. No matter, the show was amazing, and the audience sang along to every single word to every song. Every word. So it was quite a chorus.

The Troubadour lighting is always sultry and full of reds and blues that make photography with an actual camera frustrating, but I did my best, as I really wanted to capture this experience. Several of the photos were just going to edit better as black and white, so there is a nice mix.

I was reminded of the phenomenal times when John Farnham, Australia’s most beloved singer, who never broke internationally or even wanted to, would come out on stage in those Whispering Jack times, and stand before his audience and just feel waves and waves of crashing love. Darren Hayes’s Troubadour show was like that. I would have liked to hear “Crash and Burn”, actually, and I also hoped for “Affirmation” – a mouthful of a lyric if ever there was one – but he had many years and albums of solo work to include and he kept the show to 90 minutes. His voice never faltered, and hopefully it’s given him the affirmation he might have been seeking to put himself back out there on tour again. I think I heard there is a new album in the works. This is an artist who cannot do anything except make music. So if I ever do run into him in Santa Monica I’ll let him know I was there at that momentous first night of his two Troubadour shows, and I’ll never forget it. And that it matters, truly, madly, deeply, that he is brave enough to show up with his gift of music to share the savagery of living, the beauty of loving, the joy of surviving, the honesty of being.

He finished the show with “Bloodstained Heart” but he left everyone as he began, with happy hearts.

Shameless self-promotion: if you are one of the Savage Garden fans who still does not have a copy you can get Songwriters Speak here.