i believe in a thing called love the darkness album name

So it’s never a chore to play that song.” “The crowd loves it when it happens, everyone gets their phones out… and it’s just a great moment in the set for everybody in the room. “I still love performing it live,” he says. That’s probably part of the reason why it’s such a protein-rich recording: We shaved off all the bits we didn’t need.”īut that doesn’t mean Hawkins and his bandmates are sick of their signature song. “Because, like a lot of bands, we spent a lot of time refining that material and gigging those songs before we recorded them, and it turned out really great. “People still compare everything that we do with that first album we’re never going to hear the last of it,” he says. In the United States, it has sold 990,000 downloads and been streamed 93.4 million times, according to MRC Data. I really went for the Slash vibe.”īut despite making “magic” on Motorheart, Hawkins seemingly knows that The Darkness will forever be trying to catch lightening in a bottle the way it did with “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” which charted across the globe and reached No. You can tell we’ve referenced it and used them as a touchstone in places, especially my guitar sound. “I’ve always listened to Guns N’ Roses - quite a lot of Guns N’ Roses actually - but that seems to have crept into the music a bit more this time around. “There’s definitely a little more Guns N’ Roses on this record,” he says.

And when it comes to creating Motorheart, he drew lyrical inspiration from late AC/DC singer-songwriter Bon Scott and, perhaps surprisingly, musical leadership from Guns N’ Roses. However, Hawkins peppers the conversation with bands he’s interested in emulating - Queen, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy. Shows that if you stick around long enough, that’s what you start to see - and that’s one of the things that makes it worthwhile.” There weren’t for a little while, and we were probably the only band doing those for a minute there. “There are guitar solos in rock songs again. “I think you can hear The Darkness in other people’s music now,” he says before mentioning The Struts and Walk the Moon as bands who would name The Darkness as an influence.

In fact, when asked which bands have influenced The Darkness the most, Hawkins turns the tables to point out how he and his bandmates - his brother Dan Hawkins on guitar, Frankie Poullain on bass and Rufus Taylor (son of Queen’s Roger Taylor) on drums - have impacted the rock world. Take, for example, the title track - an ode to a sex robot purchased by a man hoping to find the perfect match, which includes the lyrics “I never have to listen to ridiculous opinions/ She never tries to make me into one of her minions/ The touch of a button, a steely caress/ You need a Phillips screwdriver to get her undressed.” To anyone familiar with The Darkness, the words are obviously sung in jest, but to the uninitiated, they may raise some eyebrows.īeyond “Motorheart” being a rip-roaring lead single that reminds fans of what The Darkness is capable of, album helps solidify the band’s legacy as one of the United Kingdom’s preeminent rock acts of the past two decades. “I’m not going soul-searching or anything, though,” he says. But, for the most part, it revolves around relationships. “After having had a year and a half of torment and uncertainty and suffering, I thought our fans deserved to hear us having a good time again, like we did on our first record.”Įven so, Hawkins admits the album gets “a bit quasi-political” in a couple of places. “I didn’t want Motorheart to be another Easter Is Canceled, our album where we’re sort of talking about the state of the world,” Hawkins exclusively tells Billboard via Zoom while seated at a Thai restaurant in St.

I believe in a thing called love the darkness album name