ENOUGH WITH THE OPERAS AND SONNETS! RUFUS WAINWRIGHT GETS BACK TO SINGER-SONGWRITING.
“I’VE WRITTEN two operas and I’d like to write one more,” says Rufus Wainwright, calling in from his holiday home in Montauk, Long Island. “I’ve also worked in musical theatre and song cycles. But my true profession is as a pop songwriter. I have to look in on that eventually, and go for it.”
Since Wainwright’s last pop-centric
album, 2012’s Out Of The Game, he’s released Prima Donna, a recording of the opera he premiered in 2009; 2016’s Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets; and staged his second opera, Hadrian. Moving from Toronto to Los Angeles – to live nearer his daughter Viva – provided the catalyst for change. “2018 was
the 20th anniversary of my first [self-titled] album, which I made in LA with classic session
players, and as soon as I got to LA, I realised I wanted to make another of those good old-fashioned records,” he says.
Of the producers Wainwright met, “I immediately clicked with Mitchell Froom. The deal-breaker was that he works a lot with Randy Newman, who amongst all the classic artists in LA is the one I admire most. What’s also great about Mitchell is, I’m a romantic, I adore Hollywood fabulousness and dramatic arrangements, and he put all that in there with not many instruments. In this era of no budgets, he made my record sound like a million dollars.”
The album is currently titled Unfollow The Rules, after the song inspired by an offhand comment by Viva. Says Wainwright, “A lot of the song came from psychotherapy: me hitting my forties, the death of relatives, sifting through the wreckage to find the point of trauma before you can move forward. But it could equally be about the world, rather than myself.”
The world at large looms up in Hatred – “there’s a lot of it in the air” – and Trouble In Paradise, “about the fashion world, but the basic premise is, things aren’t going well no matter how pretty things look.” It’s not all socio-political gloom, though: Romantical Man was inspired by, “walking across London, and how the city engenders itself to getting lost in its history,” while This One’s For The Ladies is, “a love letter to certain members of my fan club,” backed by Froom’s electronic arrangement. “Like most Rufus Wainwright records,” says the singer, “it’s a real pot pourri of influences.”
After the admitted excesses of the young Wainwright’s personal life, he sees Unfollow The Rules as evidence of Rufus the grown-up. “I’ve entered this more mature arena for a singer-songwriter, a figure with an illustrious past who hits their stride in their later professional years: Leonard Cohen is an amazing example. After the opera world, and natural aging, I can now sing at the full power of my abilities, and this record really shows that off. There were moments when I was heading in another direction (laughs), which I wouldn’t change for anything, but I’m happy
I didn’t lose it. This voice needs to sing.”
“I can now sing at the full power of my abilities.” RUFUS WAINWRIGHT