It's Amazing the effect of Savage Garden and Darren Hayes has...
It is still amazing how much Darren Hayes' music has an effect on my life. I'm sitting here working on my outline for my Biology Seminar and I am listening to Darren Hayes and Savage Garden. I grew up with Savage Garden and once the band split, I followed Darren Hayes into his solo career. I just think it's amazing how much his music has a power over me, how it can still make me feel emotions I thought I had forgotten.
Most of these emotions have to do with my first true relationship. Yes, it's one of these posts, and don't worry if you don't want to see me become an emotional mush pot, I'll put the rest under a cut but first a little taste. Yes, my first real relationship, it was a long distance and I know a lot of people wouldn't consider this a "real" relationship but love doesn't know what distance is and I will say that I actually was in love. She lived in CA and I was in PA. I would call her like every day or at least talk to her online and our love budded into something I had never felt before. It was quite wonderful especially for someone who is kind of a loner, by choice and by other people. Even now, I remember how wonderful it was and see it with very fond memories. So, what does this have to do with the the band Savage Garden and Darren Hayes, well, I'll put that under the cut.
Well, one of the only english bands she listened to (She was very much into jpop (japanese pop) at the time, a product of her anime obsession which I also got sucked into) was Savage Garden. Now I had also loved this band since it's inception and since music was a huge part of my life even back then being able to share a common band thrilled me to death. What I would like to do know is take you on this musical journey which only Darren Hayes could tell. I will definitely name the songs that had an effect on me and give an explanation but for the important ones and if youtube has them, I will actually provide a clip for that song So, let this journey begin...
The first song we will look at is one she actually picked out because of the circumstances that we met. For the longest time, I actually couldn't listen to this song because of how much it reminded me of her. I eventually got over it but it was a good couple of months. Actually for awhile, just listening to Savage Garden to me...particularly their second album "Affirmation". Anyway the song was "I Knew I Loved You": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cBtijic5Fk :
Yeah, it is a bit of a cheesy love song, but I was young okay? And it did absolutely described our relationship at the time. Other songs which also did it was "The Best Thing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYZN7UnIi4) but that song really goes with the whole cheesy love song thing. I do know that when we would fight I would always, always turn to this next song and I still do in fact. This one and these are all off the second Savage Garden CD so far, Affirmation, but anyway...I don't know, I just love this song and it always helped me out in a fight. It was "Hold Me": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMMwq9zWwGs
These songs still hold the memories which I attached to them. My brain works like that with all these compex connections and relationships and they will always carry these signatures from my previous relationship. I have moved on but I still like to remember the good times I had with her and I realized what went wrong and we have since moved on. Both of us now are engaged.
Anyway, carrying on with the journey. Yeah, things eventually went sour after about a year of dating. I won't get into the details of what happened but I will say a lot of it was miscommunication and jealousy that destroyed it. Afterwards, I was broken. It was my first love and I had lost it...I had no idea how to deal with these emotions. I was angry at her, at myself and at the world. I was in emotional pain because I had lost something that felt good. I dealt with it the best I could and after I came back to Savage Garden when the songs which I used to relate to such joy, lost their sting, I found other songs which helped me deal with my pain. One in particular, I listened to the most because it's what I wanted to do. I wanted to gun down romance...love was nothing to me and I would push forward alone and more vicious then ever. This song was Savage Garden's "Gunning Down Romance": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2PKva0MNa0 I listened to this song religiously because of how much I related to it. When I wasn't listening to Savage Garden, I did listen to harder rock, things that expressed my pain and rage. It actually was a fundemental change in not only my music taste but my attitude towards life.
Thankfully, they rage-filled, angsty teen stage didn't last and time did heal my wounds. I grew calmer and wiser but I will always have those connections to those emotions and always be able to relate to them which I will get to later since I want to get done with the songs on "Affirmation". After the misery, pain and rage died, I was filled with longing. I spent a good deal time single in the years after. I dated others but none would last and none ever provided the happiness of the first so I trudged through high school. She would literally haunt my dreams sometimes. I had a couple of dreams where I dreamed we had stayed together and how happy we stayed after we got over that stupid arguement. I would wake and feel the pain of longing for her or that feeling again...searching for that feeling got me a good amount of mistakes but that is for another time. Anyway, I turned to these two songs afterwards having an urge to call or contact her some way to see what she was doing. The first one is "The Lover After Me" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIAEzxvEWKA and "I Don't Know You Anymore": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_x_CvM0V3M.
Like I said, those are the songs on just that album which reminded me of her. I didn't get to hear these other songs until I was very much over this first love but the emotions are still deeply buried in my soul as if to say "Never forget". Now, I attach more to these songs than this relationship and much of these have a different signifigance than the ones I mentioned above since those songs related directly back to that first relationship. These next songs really are indirectly related and just describe the real power that Darren Hayes can put behind his songs.
So, Savage Garden split after a dissagreement between the two and Darren Hayes got the rights to the songs and continued his career going solo. His first album was "Spin" and it is a very good album. A lot of it was me longing for the hopeless romantic relationship and me just wanting a fullfilling relationship to be some semblence of the first. One of those songs is "I Can't Get Enough of You" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHC54Hg84Eg but what stands out about this album is a song that involves being good enough for a person and the second chorus reminds me of growing up with my mom, it's "Good Enough": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjIHfLQlpjM That song is powerful, imo. It is about what a relationship is really about and gets to the heart of what love is. It knows that the road of relationship is hard and you have to be good enough.
Well, then the second album came out, "The Tension and the Spark and it took me down that dark path once again. It seems Darren Hayes went down a similar at the time. This not only has to do with relationships but my social life in general. How alone I felt during high school and my contempt for people. This album begins with a power hitter called "Darkness": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kNpcyvt9gk And this song relates to not only my love life but my social life. I was covered in darkness...and the song explains better than I can so I suggest listening to it. Now there are other songs on this album but there are only a few that kept the hope like "Light": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfVb_U2NEB4 but most of it was just expression in the pain I felt. The first example was "Unlovable": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En77yKCfVzk which extended from more than just the first relationship but my trouble with women in general (My past self would be very surprised that I am engaged as a senior in college) and this song continued with "Void": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGSINuGe2_I which describes the void which was left from that first love which I just couldn't seem to fill. These dissolved into the apathy of the song "Love and Attraction": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXVUvAtZJ-M
That really concludes the emotional journey of mine. I did recover by the end of my high school career enough to go on and snatch up my now fiance and it's back to the cheesy loves songs and ENTER THE HAGGIS! Those songs still hold the power that they did when I was stil feeling the happiness and pain that let me relate to them so well. Darren Hayes is a great writer and musician and I will continue to listen to those songs to remember the good times and the bad times.
I might do this with other bands that I grew with and how they affected me through my life but I have to know, how many actually listened to the songs? .