I am a big fan of Rufus Wainwright. Wainwright makes music that sounds ornate. He is not a writer of spare folk music. At his best he is breathtaking: his rich baritone can soar more powerfully than the slurred lyrics, & his piano is filled with tremolo & rococo quavers without sacrificing the songs.
Wainwright seems to never be far from pretension, & after 8 albums, he is now at a point in his career where he can count on his adoring audience to accept his affectation as another part of his aesthetic, a wellspring for his talent & his extravagance. He creates magnificent, baroque, spiraling songs.The duality of Wainwright’s musical muscle & his confessional manner seems, to me, to embody disgust & rejected emotions that fight it out as if they were wrong notes.
Wainwright is equal parts Gershwin, Sondheim & Pet Shop Boys. His album- All Days Are Nights was written & recorded while Wainwright’s mother, musician- Kate McGarrigle, was dying of cancer. Released just months after death, it is a somber & mournful, with a big pinch of humor. With Rufus Waunwright it is drama that I desire & it is drama I get(but not melodrama) & I am somehow enchanted:
“My mother’s in the hospital
My sister’s at the opera
I’m in love, but let’s not talk about it”
Earlier this year, Wainwright became a father with Lorca Cohen, daughter of legendary Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, giving birth to a baby- Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen.
Although I have yet to receive my invitation, but Wainwright & theatre producer Jörn Weisbrodt announced they will wed in Montauk on August 23.
Wainwright: “I proposed over an Indian meal. I was very nonchalant, like, ‘Maybe we should get married. Will you marry me?"'
“I've been with Jörn for about 5 years, and I’m not finding anything better, & I’ve certainly travelled the world and had opportunities to fall out of line, & it doesn’t ever seem to happen, you know, I just keep wanting to go back to him.”
His new album- Out of the Game is set in a warm, 1970s, slightly Laurel Canyon-meets- David Bowie’s Young Americans sound.
Wainwright, working with Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorite producer & winner of the Grammy winner for Producer Of The Year- Mark Ronson, both note the influence of the great recordings of the 1970s on Out Of The Game. They reference Elton John, Harry Nilsson, & Steely Dan, & the genre-blending & sense of songwriting ambition that characterized the best music of that era.
His narcissism is as much a part of his charm as his incredible voice, his piano, & his lyrical skill. I love Rufus Wainwright because he is beautiful, a bit doomed, & already, at 38 years old, a gay Icon.
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