Musical Style and Influences
We really love what we're doing. We still love playing music together. I think there's a whole philosophy with our band. When you know there are a couple thousand people who paid money and just want to have a good night out, and if you think about that for a minute before the show, you get really fired up. It's quite a nice job we have, and a great lifestyle.
—Darren Middleton
Middleton rarely takes a singer or songwriter's role for Powderfinger, generally delegating those tasks to Bernard Fanning. However, the song "Over My Head" from Internationalist had Middleton performing vocals. This came about when Middleton did a recording of himself singing the song before Fanning had the chance to do so. Previously, Middleton had written the lyrics to "JC", which was sung by Fanning. However, Middleton sung JC several times throughout the 2007 Upstairs at the Downstairs tour. Despite Middleton's minimal songwriting, he has been praised for it by his band mates; Jon Coghill told a 1999 interview that "Darren (Middleton) and Bernie (Fanning) are extremely good at writing songs." Middleton agrees with this analysis; telling Undercover's Paul Cashmere in 2003 that "We are about writing good music." He commented that the band used their position at the top of the Australian industry to comment and give people ideas to think about, rather than "trying to say people should take it as gospel". Middleton has criticised the "boy band" phenomena, pointing out that "A lot of them can sing well, but they have people writing all their lyrics for them."
Middleton has cited numerous Australian bands, including AC/DC, Crowded House, and Midnight Oil, as ongoing influences in his music, as well as international artists including Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, and Ben Harper. "I went through a bad eighties stage. Bad glam bands. Twisted Sister. Some really bad punk", Middleton comments on the time in which he learned the guitar. Middleton has used a Les Paul guitar, and was praised by Alphonse Leong of Drop-D, described as playing it "as well as any of the seminal axe-noodlers of the hippie era".
Read more about this topic: Darren Middleton
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