Savage Garden Biography

Savage Garden enclosed members Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones. They met through a newspaper ad and created their first demo tape. Firstly named Red Edge, they chose to go with Savage Garden, inspired by the phrase “Beauty was a Savage Garden” (The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice).

Early Career

Their debut single “I Want You” peaked at no. 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100. This performance was followed by the success of the debut album Savage Garden (1997). The self-entitled album reached number one on the Australian charts and held its position for 19 weeks.

Shortly after their Australian success, they also grasped fame overseas, in the US and UK. Their second album was produced by Walter Afanasieff, that also worked with artists like Ricky Martin, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Affirmation (1999) was later performed at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Its single “I Knew I Loved You” peaked at number one on the Hot 100 chart.

The End

In 2002 Savage Garden broke up and Jones pursued a solo career. He continued to spawn successful singles and started his own production company called Meridien Musik.

The only releases under the Savage Garden name that came up later were packages and compilations. Truly Madly Completely: The Best of Savage Garden (2005) and Savage Garden: The Singles (2015) kept their pop spirit alive.

Darren Hayes said about their first product manager, in an interview with Official Charts: “She came up to us and announced. ‘I hate pop music, I’m more of a rock chick, but pop is really selling right now, so I’m going to make you the biggest band in the world.’ That was our introduction to the music industry! We weren’t really taking any of it too seriously at that point.”

Photo Source: Discogs