The Darkness have spoken to NME about being part of the fabric of Christmas, their resurgence as an arena act, and being “one of the last proper rock ’n’ roll bands”.
The UK glam-rock veterans recently swapped their catsuits for big coats and scarves when they performed a festive pop-up for fans and commuters at London’s busy St Pancras station. Ever since the release of their now staple ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ in 2003, the band and their music have become part of the festive furniture.
“As Santa prepares to fly his reindeer-fuelled sleigh of Slays across the night sky, thence to squeeze his tubby frame down the exhaust flues of the nation’s central heating boilers, so we, The Darkness, dust off our Christmas songs in readiness for a glut of celebration!” said frontman Justin Hawkins of their stripped-back King’s Cross set.
“And what better place to celebrate than Britain’s favourite railway station? As the commuters hurry by, mince pies crushed in their frozen palms, we are filled with joy to tickle the ivories of Christmas Warmth, and strum upon the Lute of Festive Light.”
Speaking to NME after their performance, guitarist Dan Hawkins told us how it was all “just a good laugh”, having rushed to the station fresh from their US tour as they wanted to treat their fans to some Yuletide joy and good tidings.
“Our fans are so cool and fill in the gaps,” he said. “We don’t have to do perfect renditions of things – we can just have a laugh. The audience mostly chose the songs today. We’re trying to instil some Christmas vibes into the public transport dreariness of King’s Cross station and the most popular request was ‘Givin’ Up’. They’ve given up givin’ a fuck!”
Massive hits, deep cuts, a Radiohead cover and festive bangers were delivered – including the band’s rendition of Cliff Richard classic ‘Mistletoe And Wine’. The station rendition was a little more faithful to the original compared to the one with “sprinkles of shoegaze and drone” released as a single last week.
It’s all in keeping with the band’s love of Christmas, which even goes as far to take them on a tour of UK arenas next December off the back of the success of 2025 album ‘Dreams On Toast’.
Check out our full interview with Dan Hawkins below, where he tells us about what to expect, their love of Radiohead, reaching a new generation of fans, and the troubled state of rock ‘n’ roll.
NME: Hello Dan. ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ has become one of the real proper festive anthems of this century. Did you know you were onto something at the time?
Dan Hawkins: “Well, we were trying to work out what the next single would be. It was coming up to Christmas and we’d had a really successful campaign in the UK. I was in the Met Bar getting horrendously drunk with Max Lousada, who was our A&R guy at the time. He said, ‘We’ve got to think about a Christmas single, haven’t we? What do you reckon: ‘Love Is Only A Feeling?’
“I was like, ‘Well, it’s not a Christmas single, is it?’ He asked if we had one and I said ‘Yeah’… but we didn’t. We were on a tour bus on the way to support Metallica on the RDS Arena in Dublin the next day. I bought a load of fairy lights and Christmas jumpers and we wrote it on the way there. We just blagged it, really.
“Justin had that chorus as a piss-around thing from years ago, and we asked how we’d turn that concept into a song and then it was written in a couple of hours in the back of a bus. At the time, I did want to compete: I wanted to be part of the race for Christmas. You can spot it a mile off when they just add some bells and the word ‘Christmas’ to an average song. We wanted to do it properly.”
Do you feel like The Darkness have become part of the fabric of Christmas now?
“I’ve always loved Christmas and Christmas songs. Maybe it’s because of the age and the era when I was getting into music in the early ‘80s. It’s such a shame it has died off, but it was a really exciting time. For a lot of children like myself, it was kind of their introduction to music. These were songs that they could really relate to and were played over and over.”
Did you choose December for your 2026 arena tour so that people could get into full Darkness spirit?
“Even close friends of mine who come to every London show sigh if the tour is in Spring or early Autumn or whatever, because they consider coming to see The Darkness play in December as part of their Christmas build-up. Those are my best friends saying that, and not necessarily the biggest Darkness fans.”
I’m sure I’ve seen you play ‘Don’t Let The Bells End’ at Download at the height of summer…
“We did the time before last! Just for a laugh, really. We were touring the 20th anniversary of ‘Permission To Land’ and the setlist was all the big hits from that era, so we couldn’t really not play it. We did, against a lot of people’s advice and it went down a storm.
“We’re just part of people’s festive period, and we’ve got quite a few Christmas songs. As you’ve seen today, we can break into pretty much any one… and do a pretty bad job!”
People often forget the strange trajectory of The Darkness. ‘Permission To Land’ came out a few months before Muse’s ‘Absolution’, and they showed two very different sides of British arena rock – but both massive….
“We played with them a lot on the ‘Big Day Out’ tour in Australia and we got on with them really well. In some ways, we do cross over a lot. They go the more cool and progressive route, and we go the more rock ’n’ roll Bon Scott, snotty end of it.”
You were headlining Reading & Leeds around that time, you experienced some wilderness years, and now you’re back in arenas. How would you explain your journey, and why is this happening now?
“It’s funny, isn’t it? Ever since we got back together [in 2011], I can safely say that it’s been building and building. We had quite a tough challenge convincing people that we were going to be around for a while. We’re operating on pretty much a cult fanbase. The transient pop fans that came and screamed at the early gigs and then left when they realised we were actually a rock band went quite early doors, then we split up.
“When we got back together, we had to really develop a hardcore fanbase again. We had it initially to the point where we could sell out The Astoria as an unsigned band, then we kind of just fucking blew it all and had to start again. It’s taken us a while to release quality stuff, and get better and better as far as being a rock band that isn’t just peddling the same old shit every time.
“As you’ve just heard, our fans aren’t shouting for the hits – they want the album tracks, and not the ones we were playing 20 years ago. We’re a different beast now.”
It’s strange how younger generations can just discover you free of context now thanks to streaming and playlist culture, eh?
“That’s absolutely true. My daughters are 14 and 15-years-old, and I’m taking them to see Radiohead tonight. They’ve come into Radiohead from ‘Kid A’ onwards, the really out there more progressive stuff that they’ve done, and I had to tell them, ‘Radiohead are a fucking guitar band, listen to these riffs!’ Radiohead and ‘The Bends’ are a big influence on this band, and people forget that. Before it went a bit Coldplay, wishy-washy and depressing, Radiohead had ‘The Bends’ which was the biggest and best rock album of the time.
“I’m playing this to them and they’re going, ‘It can’t be! That’s not Radiohead!’ Their minds were blown. When I think of Radiohead, I think of them as the snotty, riffing, huge-sounding alternative rock band, and years later there are a huge amount of kids tuning into them based on the more ambient and atmospheric stuff. They’re both right… but I do hope they play ‘The Bends’ tonight.”
Have you ever heard back from Radiohead about your cover of ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’?
“They’re aware that it exists. I wouldn’t put it past us to do another one of theirs after we next see them. Justin and I are both going, and when he’s not singing falsetto, he can do a bloody good Thom Yorke impression. He’s got the same sort of timbre in that mid-range, and quite powerful in the same way that Thom Yorke can just blast it.
“We actually played on a record with those guys on the Live Aid 2 thing [the 2004 all-star version of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’]”
Given that you guys were drawing on ‘classic rock’, is it not strange and surreal that to the younger fans in your audience, to them you are ‘classic rock’?
“We literally are! We’re just so fucking old. We’re one of the last proper rock’n’roll bands. There’s this thing going round on Instagram where [AC/DC’s] Malcolm Young – one of my heroes – was saying about how there were loads of metal bands, rock bands and alternative bands, but very few rock ’n’ roll bands. He talks about the swing in terms of the looseness of it and where the beat hits. That’s what we are, for better or worse. Sometimes it gets the better of us, sometimes we get in trouble, sometimes we’re a load of shit, sometimes we’re great.
“We snuck in there as a rock ’n’ roll band. We might be the last men standing at this rate, because the genre has sort of evaporated. One thing I was always really sad about was that there weren’t more rock bands that followed us through that. We’ve managed to cling on like a bad smell. It’s ironic: we started out playing classic rock and now we literally are, because of how old we are!”
Are there any younger bands that you do rate?
“There’s a band called The Southern River Band from Australia, and they’re really cool. I really like Turnstile, Amyl & The Sniffers are a great rock ’n’ roll band, The War On Drugs have a great bit of swing in the right places to an extent. There’s some great stuff knocking about. My favourite bands are the ones where you say, ‘You’re gonna love it, but you might hate it’. That’s when you know a band is good.”
Check out The Darkness’ 2026 UK tour dates below, with tickets available here.
JULY 2026
1 – Knebworth Park (with Iron Maiden)
DECEMBER 2026
8 – Glasgow, OVO Hydro
9 – Leeds, FD Arena
11 – Manchester, AO Arena
12 – Birmingham, Utilita Arena
13 – Cardiff, Utilita Arena
15 – Brighton, Brighton Centre
16 – London, The O2