D is for The Darkness

By Lizzi

n impromptu viewing of MTV's "Headbanger's Ball" never was, and in all honesty, will never be as fruitful. When I first saw Justin Hawkins in the music video for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", his long awkward body spread about a rotating velvet pillow-bed upon his spaceship, his snaggleteeth winking at me charmingly as his beautiful falsetto fell lovingly upon his operatic lyrics... oh boy. Did it hit home. I became an instant die hard fan.

Much to my pleasure, I needn't love The Darkness only for frontman Justin Hawkins' sake. Their music is so cute and really fun. I've never been a big heavy metal fan (I've only ever been an admirer because the music hasn't impressed me as well as the showmanship has) and so it seems fitting that I should fall for a pseudo heavy/glam metal band. All the trappings, but none of the guts. I'm superficial at heart. :)

The Darkness was a rock band from the UK who–I feel positive about this–actually were a joke band, making real music, while hilariously dramatizing this life of rock stars. Like they all got together and said "We can do music, it's not so hard... so let's allow ourselves the chance to live in real life, a rock-band biopic".

As they rose to new heights of popularity in their motherland they followed the familiar paths of rock celebrity; assless leather chaps, sold-out concerts with large floating objects (breasts as opposed to pigs), insane publicized nights of partying, interviews with Rolling Stone, cocaine addictions, dramatic falling outs among band members, until their inevitable parting of ways. Some question my theory that they were actively seeking out merely the lives of rock stars, and say that their rock and roll career was genuine; it was for the music. But I ask you... do you think "Growing On Me" is a love song? Or a song about a love/hate relationship with genital warts? If you think it's the former, I've got some sad news for you. The Darkness is an incredibly talented fake glam metal get-up. Irony in it's most beautiful form possible.

The music is great, it's unbelievably beautiful and fun. There's a guitar solo in the ballad "Seemed Like Good Idea at the Time" when the orchestration crescendos and as it breaks, I swear on my mothers life, it feels exactly like a waterfall of love spilling onto my heart.

To get started why don't you just begin with the good old classic, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", don't skip "Love is Only a Feeling" and "Love on the Rocks With No Ice." (The last of which I've used from time to time to drown out my husbands reasonable point of view during our semi-annual rows with one another, mouthing to him, "I can't hear you, the music won't turn down".) But you really can't go wrong starting with any of their songs. They're all so musical and lovely, you'll be swooning in mere measures.