The Darkness are still burning bright
Britain’s most gloriously excessive rock band are back charting in the Top 5 and bringing their lightning-bolt show to Singapore for the very first time
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[SINGAPORE] Most bands that explode as dramatically as The Darkness did in 2003 tend to burn out just as fast. The music industry is littered with the wreckage of acts that arrived on a wave of hype, collected their awards and quietly disappeared when the tide went out. The Darkness were supposed to be one of them.
Instead, more than two decades on, Justin Hawkins and his band are back selling out venues across four continents, scoring their highest chart position in decades, and preparing to play Singapore for the very first time on Mar 11. For fans who have followed the group since their barnstorming debut more than two decades ago, it has been a long time coming.
“We have been to Singapore, but only momentarily passing through the airport and it looks so dazzling and opulent and lovely,” singer Justin Hawkins says over a Zoom call recently, “So when they asked us if we wanted to play, we were like yes, of course we do and hopefully it’ll be the first of many.”
The Darkness were formed by brothers Justin and guitarist Dan Hawkins in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 2000. Three years of relentless gigging later, they released their debut album, Permission to Land. Despite being so brazenly unfashionable and defiantly in thrall to the chest-baring excess of 1970s hard rock, the record went quadruple platinum.
It earned the band three Brit Awards including Best British Group and Best Album. It also produced one of the most recognisable rock songs of the decade: I Believe in a Thing Called Love, with its galloping riff and Justin Hawkins’ glass-shattering falsetto.
Internal tensions led to a hiatus and a revolving door of line-up changes, before a full reunion in 2011 with a renewed sense of purpose. They have been recording and touring near-continuously ever since, releasing six more studio albums on independent labels.
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Justin Hawkins is not bothered radio doesn’t embrace the kind of music The Darkness plays.
“Apart from our first record, I don’t think we’ve had much in the way of airplay. We’re not playing very fashionable music and a lot of the time I listen to the radio and think: Do I really want to be on it with that music playing anyway?”
Their eighth album, Dreams on Toast, released in early 2025, peaked at No 2 on the UK Albums Chart – their strongest chart position since Permission to Land – and The Darkness are set to see 2026 out with a UK arena tour and the opening slot for Iron Maiden at Knebworth.
Justin Hawkins credits the band’s ongoing success to the intensely loyal fanbase, many of whom still buy vinyl, CDs, even cassettes. “They want to make sure the money they spend goes to the band, so that we can keep touring.”
No algorithms, no AI
Offstage, Justin Hawkins has cultivated a second life as one of rock music’s most engaging YouTubers, amassing a large subscriber base with his candid opinions on music and the industry. The channel, Justin Hawkins Rides Again, began accidentally, born out of Covid boredom and a suggestion from his tattoo artist.
“I was very sceptical. I didn’t think it was going to work. But I tried it, and it sort of caught fire.”
The experience of analysing other people’s music has sharpened his own instincts, pushing him towards what he describes as deliberate strangeness of abandoning conventional song structure, experimenting with microtonal tuning, refusing auto-tune in a genre increasingly addicted to it.
“One of my great campaigns is to try and abandon auto tune, because whenever I hear that in rock, I just think that’s embarrassing,” he explains. “Rock singers sing flat to add despair and sing sharp to add excitement. Robert Plant, for example, never sang on the note, nor did Nick Cave.”
He adds: “They sang sharp or flat – always has, always will – and these, these are the real heroes for me, because it’s like you have the courage to show your own voice in a musical climate where everything’s auto tuned and it just sounds like pop music.”
On artificial intelligence (AI), he is unequivocal. He refuses to use it for songwriting, for social media, for anything.
“I happen to believe that if you write a song with the assistance of AI, there’ll be some sort of audit, and they’ll look back and say: You used AI to help write that hit, so you shouldn’t be earning on it. And I actually agree with that. If a computer wrote the song, why are you making money?”
And in an era saturated with reunion tours and heritage nostalgia, The Darkness occupy a quietly radical position: a band that never really stopped. Justin Hawkins is gently scathing about acts that disappear for years and then return expecting a hero’s welcome.
“Don’t have a break,” he says, “because it gives people an opportunity to see it in a cynical way. If you just keep going, you have longevity by default.”
The Darkness plays Capitol Theatre on Mar 11. Tickets available from Sistic.
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