In the early noughties, it felt like the fun was missing from rock’n’roll. The airwaves were ruled by bands specialising in the earnest, from posturing indie dudes to gloomy emo kids staring out from under heavy fringes.
Then in 2003 The Darkness somersaulted into the charts and into the nation’s hearts; a spangly, spandex-wearing burst of joy that harked back to the heydays of 70s rock and glam while somehow sounding like a breath of fresh air.
With their debut album Permission To Land they achieved mainstream success in a way that few rock bands have since – they had talent, a tongue-in-cheek attitude and oodles of dramatic flair. And you can’t get much more dramatic than a power ballad.
“I really wanted to do a power ballad,” frontman Justin Hawkins says, laughing, of Love Is Only A Feeling from Permission To Land. “I think when you’re making an album, there should be one at the end of the first half and another at the end of the second half. That’s how Aerosmith albums used to be!”
Taking cues from the likes of Aerosmith, Boston and Queen, Hawkins and co. set about creating the perfect power ballad for the age. The result was a lighters-in-the-air, guitar solo-packed anthem with a bittersweet message and a sound as huge as the music video that accompanied it (see boxout, left), all wrapped up in poetic lyrics. Writing it, Hawkins explored a different lyrical approach.
“It’s a song about the nature of how love works,” he explains. “It’s about how wonderful love makes you feel, but also to have a word with yourself about the reality of it. Love’s brilliant, but watch out: words to live by.
“In the early noughties it wasn’t cool to be talking about love in a brazen way [in music],” he continues. “A lot of people would allude to love in their lyrics, or have it be a metaphor for sex, but weren’t dealing with it head-on. We wanted to do it more from the heart – as opposed to the other organ!”
In examining love in its romantic form, Hawkins turned to classic poets for inspiration, particularly with the lyrics: ‘The light of my life would tear a hole right through each cloud that scudded by/Just to beam on you and I.’
“I remembered these famous poets from school, and one said something about clouds ‘scudding’,” he says. “And I thought that’s the only application of that word – clouds are the only thing that scud. So I wanted to make sure that was in there.
“I spent a lot of time on that lyric… I think it’s obvious that I was trying to sound clever,” he laughs. “I think it stands out on that album as the song where I really tried with the lyrics. The others are probably a bit more instinctive. Some of them are a bit sweary, there’s a rage and frustration, while Love Is Only A Feeling is definitely more ponderous.”
It wasn’t just Justin who really wanted to sink his teeth into a power ballad. The rest of the band were also so into the idea for Love Is Only A Feeling that it became the most collaboratively written song on Permission To Land.
“I don’t know what it was – I guess it was just that everyone had a strong feeling about this song and wanted to express themselves on it,” Hawkins says. “It was definitely the nearest thing to a legitimate team effort from top to bottom.”
But despite their initial enthusiasm, the song took a little while to find its feet. It wasn’t until it came to recording the track that Love Is Only A Feeling really started to come to life.
“It went through some big changes,” Hawkins explains. “I remember I had gone to America with my friend, and when I came back, Dan [Hawkins] had done all the guitars. I remember listening to it and freaking out – suddenly it sounded like a proper seventies American rock ballad. I couldn’t believe how authentic it sounded. Dan remembers the way I reacted – I was screaming! It just felt so good. Even now, nearly twenty years later, whenever he presents an idea to me, he’s looking for that reaction. Because I really felt it.”
In fact the band believed that Love Is Only A Feeling was the best song on the album – the one that would be the making of them. They weren’t quite right there (“When we presented the songs to the label they earmarked I Believe In A Thing Called Love as ‘the one’ – correctly, as it turned out,” he says), but it still made No.5.
“If we had a song now that went to Number Five in the charts we would be over the moon,” Hawkins says. “It was released at the end of the campaign, so it was never going to go to Number One – millions of people had already bought the album. But everybody knows it’s a great song, so we’re happy with that.”
In the end, The Darkness’s star burned brightly – Permission To Land went double-platinum and they won three Brit Awards in 2004 – but also burned out quickly. Second album One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back, failed to live up to the massive success of their debut, while Hawkins suffered drug and alcohol problems before entering rehab and leaving the band in 2006.
Having first reunited in 2011, The Darkness have now released eight albums. Although they’ve never returned to the levels of success of their debut, their legacy includes one of the great British rock albums and, with Love Is Only A Feeling, the ultimate modern power ballad.
“We didn’t usher in a movement of new rock music,” Justin says thoughtfully, “but what we did was introduce people to music that had been there already. I still encounter young people today who I wouldn’t expect to have any sort of respect for The Darkness, but they say we got them into listening to more rock music. It was sort of a gateway for people to discover rock’s entire back catalogue, and that’s really great.”
The original version of this feature appeared in Classic Rock 261, published in April 2019. The Darkness tour the UK in December.
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