The Darkness have announced the release of their eighth studio album, Dreams on toast, Which will arrive on March 28, 2025. To accompany the news, they shared the soft piano-led rock song “The Longest Kiss,” which pays tribute to 70s pop icons Queen and Paul McCartney.
“Longest Kiss” explores the kind of kiss that might make someone feel like they’re ready to get down on one knee. “I lost all sense of time/ It sounds silly, but I swear it was amazing/ Now all I want to do/ Is break the record that I set that day with you,” Hawkins sings before the tune.
Lead singer Justin Hawkins and his brother and bandmate Dan Hawkins came up with the song after Dan took “a long time to empty his bladder during a great endurance session at a bar,” Justin said in a statement. The song is based on a musical that was 10 years in the making called The collapse of the fishing industry in Lowestoft.
“Misty Orchards! That’s not my porn name, that’s the kind of landscape I love,” Hawkins continued. “I woke up to such a view in the beautiful Scottish town of Nairn the morning that inspired the lyrics to ‘The Longest Kiss.’ I was in tears and wrapped in an endless embrace with my (middle) age partner. It’s weird that I can still sing, but it’s a testament to the resilience of humans, especially lead singers.”
The Darkness will start their tour Dreams on toast, An album Hawkins calls “a fragrant sonic sauce, served over the remains of our envious contemporaries” in March. The rock band will kick off their tour with 17 shows in the UK and North American dates will be announced soon, according to a press release.
The band's 2003 hit song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” recently went viral after Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce (Swift's boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs player) were photographed singing the classic lyrics at the U.S. Open earlier this month. Hawkins responded to the viral clip in a TikTok video, where he opened up about the “unusual” hospitality his family received on the Eras tour and the note the pop star left on one of their VIP seats.
“It was so exciting to have you at the concert!” Swift wrote to Hawkins. “I’m a huge fan of yours and I think ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ is one of the greatest songs of all time. I hope you and your family enjoyed the concert! Thank you so much for coming!”
