“Yes, baby I’m a homosexual,” sings Darren Hayes over the shimmering Eighties pulse of his first solo album in a decade. This may not seem like much of a newsflash from the man who’s been married to his partner, Richard Cullen, for 17 years. But in recent interviews, the former Savage Garden frontman has spoken tearfully about his most successful years being in the closet, then straight-washed by the music industry when he found the courage to come out.
Shooting the video for his last single, “Insatiable” (2012), he’d been told he looked “too gay”. Now 50, he found himself watching artists such as Troye Sivan and Lil Nas X “just arrive as their authentic selves”. He realised how angry he was that his hard-won self-expression had been “extinguished by men in suits”.
