To celebrate the release of his first album in over ten years, musician Darren Hayes recently sat down with Tracy E. Gilchrist of Advocate Today to discuss his music, and how he reclaimed joy as a queer person after experiencing tragedy.

Hailing from Australia, Hayes released his first solo album in 2002 after several years as the frontman for pop duo Savage Garden. Though he left the music industry in 2012, he says he couldn't be more thrilled to make music again.

"It's such a beautiful feeling," Hayes shares. "Because I really thought that I had retired...I've had an extraordinary life, I started when I was very young, but I was kind of burnt out. And there are lots of reasons why I stepped away, but I took ten years off. So, to come back, it's very unexpected and very joyful. It's a wonderful thing."

Though he married his husband in 2004, one year before civil partnerships came into law in the United Kingdom, Hayes never felt he was able to truly be himself at the height of his career. Now, he is releasing his fifth studio album, Homosexual, as a tribute to the years he spent struggling with internalized homophobia.

"I'm aware it's a very provocative word. And I'm fifty, so for me, my associations with that word are very traumatic," Hayes says. "Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I have an association with that word which is obviously the clinical, negative stereotypes that came with it...There are whole generations of queer people who have very negative reactions to that word."

Despite living abroad, Hayes grew up in the era of Reaganism, when the HIV virus was devastating the LGBTQ+ community. Words like "homosexual" or "queer" were used as slurs at the time, whereas now, they are the title of his work.

"Using this word was a way for me to break free of my own journey and association with that word," he explains. "To show that I am proud."

Homosexual also serves as a tribute to the victims of the Pulse tragedy. In 2016, 49 people were killed when a gunman attacked a gay nightclub in Miami, Florida. Though he was on hiatus at the time, Hayes mourned with the queer community and wished to commemorate the victims. With his newest single, "All You Pretty Things," he aims to do just that.

"I think what touched me so much was that we think of queer spaces, especially nightclubs, as inherently safe," Hayes says. "Before marriage equality, sometimes gay clubs were the only places that queer people could go to to feel safe. It was the only place we could go to recognize our own. And to have that safety violated, it felt like such a violence that we hadn't experienced since the times of Stonewall. I was just so devastated, so heartbroken by that, and I wanted to say something."

Hayes' goal was to take focus off the person who committed such a horrible act and to, instead, honor the victims. He wanted to remember them "in joy" -- not to reduce their legacy to a mass shooting. In the song, he mentions how one of the fallen was a good mother, or how two others were engaged to be married. Hayes described this as "immortalizing us."

"HIV sort of erased a whole generation of queer people. In a way that their stories only live on orally. They only live on through art and through music. And we in the queer community often go to the dance floor to celebrate, to immortalize, and to exorcise our pain in joy," Hayes says. "At the very height of all of the pain and suffering in queerness is always this ability to rise above."

Homosexual releases October 7, with Hayes embarking on his Do You Remember? tour shortly after. He will perform in Toronto April 12, with shows in New York and Los Angeles afterwards on April 13 and 15, respectively. Be sure to grab tickets when the go on sale October 14, and catch his full interview with The Advocate Channel below.