Truly Madly Deeply (D Hayes/D Jones) – Savage Garden 1997
This ballad became one of Savage Garden’s biggest international hits, it was their first US #1, staying on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart for 123 weeks, held the #1 spot in Australia for 8 weeks and was #4 in the UK. APRA acknowledged the song as one of the best 30 Australian songs written in the period 1926- 2001, and it won the ARIA Award for Best Song of 1997.
Yet the song had humble beginnings, it was originally a demo cassette recording made in 1994 with the same verses, but no chorus, and titled Magical Kisses.
It was one of the 150 demo cassettes submitted by the duo to record companies and rejected, the song was subsequently tweaked, some embarrassingly cheesy lyrics about magical kisses removed, a chorus was written over a coffee in a Bayswater café (Syd) by Hayes, and musically re-configured by Jones to become became the most played song on US radio in 1997.
The song is musically inventive, languid and dream-like, but the lyrics are more prosaic, which is why the song became the slow-dance choice of fans all over the world “I’ll be your dream, I’ll be your wish, I’ll be your fantasy/ I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you need/ I’ll love you more with every breath, truly madly deeply do.”
It was simply a passionate love song which embraced nature and cosmic forces, not unlike songs of the peace/love era in the 1960’s “I want to stand with you on a mountain/ I want to bathe with you in the sea/ I want to live like this forever/ Until the sky falls down on me.”
The song was covered, by German Eurodance group Cascada in 2006, and was a big hit all over again, #4 in the UK, #14 US dance charts, and top 40 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.
