‘It is I, Justin Hawkins from the Darkness,” began the singer on 23 October 2021, launching his YouTube channel Justin Hawkins Rides Again. In the short clip that followed, the rocker explained that he would be uploading several videos each week, in which he would deconstruct classic and new songs or comment on issues in the music industry. He wasn’t expecting it to become popular. “I worried that people might think I seemed desperate,” he explains, video-calling from a cottage in the Scottish Highlands, fresh off a Darkness arena tour. “Or that I’d lost my mind.”
Three hundred and thirty-odd videos, 375,000 subscribers and 47m views later, the singer needn’t have worried. Justin Hawkins Rides Again reaches a constituency well beyond the Darkness fanbase. Although best known for their No 2 smash hit I Believe in a Thing Called Love 20 years ago, the often tongue-in-cheek bombastic rockers are still filling arenas today. When he first started the channel, he noticed that other musicians mentioned it. “But now if people stop me at an airport, it’s not to talk about the Darkness. They’ll go: ‘I love your YouTube.’”
