Songfacts®:

• In a personal development sense, an affirmation is a statement of your beliefs - a reminder of what is important to you. The word "affirmation" doesn't appear in the lyrics, but the words are a series of affirmations, as Savage Garden sings about what they stand for: Karma, goodness, family and inner beauty.
• Savage Garden performed this song at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Catherine - Glasgow, England
• This is the title track from Savage Garden's second and final studio album. They broke up in 2001, with singer Darren Hayes pursuing a solo career and guitarist Daniel Jones starting his own production company.
• During the making of their debut album, Hayes was still married to a woman and struggling with his sexuality. He had already come out privately by the time he started writing songs for Affirmation but not publicly, and some of the lyrics allude to his open secret. He told Billboard: "I wrote the lyric 'I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality' in the title track of Affirmation, and I performed the song on The Jay Leno Show and intentionally winked at the camera on that line. I was waiting to be outed, but I think because I didn't deny being gay. The press were very, very kind to me. I like to think they knew I was a good person and I wasn't ready to hold a press conference about it."
  
  Hayes was well aware that confirming what everyone already suspected about his sexuality would likely tank his career. He said: "I remember distinctly the message I got from the top down was that being gay was detrimental to sales. It was never stated, but heavily implied. You could tell it was the topic of many discussions, and I was marketed in a way that appealed to women. It was the period when Ricky Martin had women on his arms at events, and Ellen's career was torn apart by coming out."