You make me feel like the act of love is empty

Is there a song with sadder lyrics than Darren Hayes's "Unlovable"?



The electro-pop song's structure is flawless: the verses find the former Savage Garden singer aggressively spitting out his feelings while the chorus mixes a squelchy beat with a more expansive melody that in another context would be radio singalong fodder across the world. Musically, it's perfect. Darren could be singing almost anything and I'd love it.

Those lyrics, though. They, in all their awful emotive specificity, are what secures this song its place as one of the best things recorded in the '00s. The disgust the narrator feels for his subject and for himself, his depression, his anger, his desperation, his helplessness--I hope no one reading this ever has reason to feel "Unlovable" strikes them straight to their core, but it captures the tormented state of mind of an emotionally abusive relationship better than any song I can imagine.

"Unlovable" is on Darren Hayes's excellent second album, The Tension and the Spark, which can be purchased here (physical) or internationally on iTunes here.

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