‘I was extinguished by men in suits’: Darren Hayes on surviving homophobia – and finding happiness

Darren Hayes’s new album, titled Homosexual, is his first in 10 years. Reflecting on his Savage Garden days when he wasn’t public about his sexuality, he says: ‘The entire time that I was famous, all this energy and all this love was being received by an avatar.’ Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

On the cover of his new album, Darren Hayes sits proudly behind hot pink neon letters that spell out “Homosexual”. It’s a word that used to scare him, one that was hurled at him as an insult and, now, the title of his first record in 10 years.

“I get that it’s not the most original idea in the world to reclaim a pejorative,” he tells Guardian Australia. “But it’s so important to me because I was so ashamed of that.”