đŚIn December 2002 Darius was interviewed for the Smash Hits Yearbook. You can read his interview below:
IT CAME TO ME IN A DREAM.
It wasn't actually 2002, but since Pop Idol was a big part of my year, the moment where I actually decided to go on the show still stands out for me!
After Popstars, the media gave my family such a hard time that, out of respect for mum and dad, I agreed not to go in for Pop Idol. But the week before the auditions I was still really uncertain, and so I contacted Nigel Lythgoe - Nasty Nigel on Popstars - and asked him if he thought I should go for it, and I told my mum and dad that whatever he said, I'd stick by it. He told me there was this man called Simon Cowell on the show, and he was a mean, mean man and that, compared to him, Nigel was a teddy bear! He said he was going to be really tough, and I shouldn't be surprised if he knocked me down in the first week, in the first audition, not just because he wanted to make a name for himself, but because he was just plain mean! So Nigel had said don't do it and I was absolutely gutted.
Then the night before the audition, I actually dreamed that I went and got knocked back, but I just had this gut feeling. The next morning I went up to my mum and dad's room and said, "Look, I will never ask you for your blind support again, but I'm asking for it now. Please support me now, let me do this." And my mum gave me a big hug and my dad said "go for it" and the rest, as they say, is history.
EVERYONE'S A CRITIC
I got the mickey taken so much over the whole Britney Spears thing (Darius 'memorably' performed a 'unique' version of ...Baby One More Time on his original Popstars audition). To be honest, I was a national joke! So when Frank Skinner showed the video to Britney on his show, and she watched my rendition and was laughing...
Well, I just thought it was incredible that the biggest-selling female artist in the world at the time was watching me do her song! And when she said I had my "own thing going on there", and that I took the song "to another level", that was just great.
IDOL WILD
My most powerful memory of the whole tour was the crowd response, and having the feeling that getting up there and performing was the best way that I could give back even a fraction of the feeling that the public had given me over the previous few months.
On the last night we all knew it was the end of the tour, it was the Prince's Trust night and the Queen Mother had just died, so it was especially emotional for everyone. It had been such a long and fascinating journey for all of us, but we'd done it together. Saying goodbye was always going to be very emotional, even though we knew we were going to see each other again, but that moment in time, captured in one night, it was incredible.
MY BEST KEBAB EVER..:
I got this phone call from Pete, the guy who produced the Colourblind demo, telling me I had to meet him in this kebab restaurant that evening.
I didn't know what was going on, so I turned up and Steve Lilywhite, a famous record producer and one of my "pop idols' was sitting there. He said he'd been away in LA for five years, and had come back to become managing director of a record company and Pete had played him my demo. Then he says, "So, Darius, tell me about the last couple of years." And of course, 'cos he'd been in America for five years, I had to explain all about Popstars and Pop Idol!
I ran through everything, good and bad, and afterwards, he just said he wanted to meet me before he offered me a contract but it wouldn't have made any difference, and then he offered me a five album deal with Universal! I went to the toilet, splashed my face with cold water, slapped myself so I knew I wasn't dreaming, and walked back into the room. It was like my whole dream came true. To think I had the opportunity to do my own stuff, to be writing, to work with a legend.
That was probably the highlight of my year, because it had nothing to do with Pop Idol, it was because of the music. And it was the best kebab I've ever had!
FRAN'S A FAN!
I was in the canteen at Universal Records, and I saw Fran from Travis sitting over the other side.
I just went up to say thank you for writing such incredible music, and tell him that I was working with Steve Lilywhite, who'd produced one of Travis albums, and Fran got up and was like,
"Darius! How are you son?" and he gave me a big hug! We talked for an hour, he introduced me to all his mates... it was wicked!
VIVA ESPAĂA!
I was filming the video for Colourblind in the Sierra Nevada in Spain, which is the most amazing landscape, like something out of Lord Of The Rings. I remember waking up at four and being on a little balcony in a really tiny, old, rustic Spanish villa, and looking right out over the undulating plains, over the cornfields with the sun rising and the light just skimming off the horizon... It was beating off the heads of the corn, sparkling gold and red - it was incredible.
And as I looked around, I saw this Moorish temple, red stone with incredible turrets, and behind that was the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada, and behind the snow-capped peaks you could still see the moon against this blue velvet sky. It was like a scene from a movie, and I remember thinking,"I have never experienced anything like that before, and I will never experience anything like that again." So I sat down and wrote a song! It's times like that you realise how lucky you are.
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