Originally released in Australia as the third single off their self-titled debut album (after debut hit "
I Want You" and "
To The Moon And Back"), this passionate love song took off in America after a radio station in Dallas added it to their playlist. The song became a worldwide hit, but was particularly popular in the States, where it climbed to #1 on January 17, 1998 and stayed for two weeks. The
Savage Garden album went on to sell a remarkable 7 million copies in America.
Savage Garden is the Australian duo of Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones, who wrote this song together. When it hit #1 in the US, it was the first Australian record in 15 years (since Men at Work) to achieve the US top position.
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Suggestion credit:
Jo - Newcastle, Australia
This spent a record 123 weeks on the US Adult Contemporary chart, topping it for 11 weeks. In 2011,
Billboard magazine published their list of the top 100 Adult Contemporary songs of all time, and "Truly Madly Deeply" came in at #1, ahead of the #2 "
Lead Me On" by Maxine Nightingale and #3 "
Drift Away" by Uncle Kracker. Darren Hayes said of the certification: "I'm completely overwhelmed to be honest. I feel incredibly proud. That song changed my life and apparently continues to do so!"
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Suggestion credit:
Bertrand - Paris, France
This was originally an older Savage Garden song called "Magical Kisses," which they reworked to become "Truly Madly Deeply." It was included on the band's first-ever demo cassette that they shopped to labels in 1994. Vocalist Darren Hayes recalled to Billboard magazine in 2011: "The verses were exactly the same, but I'm rather embarrassed to admit the chorus did not exist. Instead, I'd written a rather awful lyric about magical kisses.
There was always something incredibly magical about the song, however, and when it reached the ears of producer Charles Fisher, who produced the first Savage Garden album, he proclaimed it to be a potential hit.
It sat on the bottom of the pile of our demos for the entire eight month recording process until the eve of the last day. I sat alone, at the Bayswater Cafe in Sydney, and completely re-wrote the chorus you hear today over a cup of coffee. I sang it the next day and the rest is history."
This was the love theme in the 1998 Jude Law movie
Music From Another Room.
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Suggestion credit:
DC - Kansas City, MO
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If you saw the name without hearing the music, you would think Savage Garden was a metal band. That is, unless you're into vampire novels. The name comes the Anne Rice novel Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles #5), specifically the passage, "In the Savage Garden you shine beautifully, my friend," which describes the landscape inhabited by the vampire. Darren Hayes of Savage Garden feels an affinity for vampires, not because he drinks blood, but because as a performer, he had to navigate a world where he was often misunderstood.
Hayes told Apple Music how the song emerged from a period of being broke and lonely: "A really sincere and special and emotional song. There was something really emotional about the combination of this very naive intention and a very deep feeling, which was how I felt when I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Kings Cross, with Daniel Jones, making this album. We were incredibly poor - I remember we used to save money by sleeping in late. Often the recording sessions wouldn't start until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, so we would always skip breakfast and get lunch and then maybe something cheap from the grocery store for dinner. But I would sleep a lot of the weekend away just to save money. I'd only just gotten married and I was away from my wife. I was a 22-, 23-year-old baby in this new marriage, I'd never lived outside of my own city before and was genuinely just lost and sad. I wrote that song for her, about my wife and how much I missed her."
Hayes initially thought the song was too personal and intended it to be a hidden bonus track on the album.
The music video, directed by Adolfo Doring, follows Hayes walking through the streets of Paris while a pair of separated lovers also wander around the city in search of each other. At the end of the clip, Hayes meets up with bandmate Daniel Jones at a small concert venue while the woman finally reunites with her man in front of the Tour Saint-Jacques monument in the heart of the city.
An earlier Australian video, directed by Tony McGrath, features Hayes and Jones performing in a white room. Jones plays a piano strewn with roses while Hayes sings while sitting on a red sofa.
This was used in the 2020 miniseries Little Fires Everywhere in the episode "Seventy Cents." It was also used on iZombie in the two-part episode "Brainless In Seattle" (2018) and Warehouse 13 in the 2010 episode "Merge With Caution."
To commemorate the sixth round of the 2009-2010 FA Cup, which fell on Valentine's Day, Puma released
a commercial featuring a throng of soccer-loving lads singing this in a pub.
The marriage that inspired this song didn't last. In 2000, Darren Hayes and his wife, Colby Taylor, got divorced, and Hayes later came out as gay. Savage Garden broke up in 2001, and he released his first solo album a year later.
In 2022, Hayes told People: "'Truly Madly Deeply' is a love song written by someone that doesn't know much about love. Now my love songs are much more nuanced - and they're less pretty on the outside."