Rufus Wainwright (album)

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Rufus Wainwright
Black and white head shot of a man; in the background is a colorful collage and the text "Rufus Wainwright" appears across the top
Studio album by
ReleasedMay 19, 1998 (1998-05-19)
Recorded1996–1997
Length53:26
LabelDreamWorks
Producer
Rufus Wainwright chronology
Rufus Wainwright
(1998)
Poses
(2001)
Alternative cover
Black and white head shot of the same man but much older, with the same title and collage, now inside a cream-colored border.
25th Anniversary Edition cover

Rufus Wainwright is the debut studio album by

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, released in the United States on May 19, 1998, through DreamWorks Records.[1] The album was produced by Jon Brion, with the exception of "In My Arms", which was produced and mixed by Pierre Marchand, and "Millbrook" and "Baby", which were produced by Brion and Van Dyke Parks. Lenny Waronker
was the album's executive producer.

Wainwright was signed to the DreamWorks label in 1996 after Waronker heard the demo tape he recorded with Marchand. Over the course of two years, Wainwright and Brion recorded 56 songs on 62 rolls of tape at a cost that exceeded $700,000. These were then narrowed down to twelve tracks for the album. No singles were released from Rufus Wainwright, though Sophie Muller directed the music video for "April Fools", which featured Wainwright in Los Angeles attempting to prevent the deaths of opera heroines. To support the album, Wainwright toured throughout the United States and Canada following its release.

Overall, reviews for the album were positive. Though it failed to chart in any country, Wainwright reached number 24 on

Juno Awards
. The album was released in Japan with the bonus track "A Bit of You", and later in 2008 in LP form through the record label Plain Recordings.

Background

Photograph of a man
Wainwright recorded a demo tape with Pierre Marchand, who would later produce and mix "In My Arms" for Rufus Wainwright.

Wainwright, born into a musical family which included parents

Wainwright attended

Warner Bros. Records in the 1970s.[7] Wainwright acknowledged that having musicians as parents gave him a "foot in the door", but attributed his success to hard work.[5]

Development

Wainwright was signed to DreamWorks in 1996. Waronker paired the singer with producer Jon Brion, and together they spent "most of 1996 and 1997" recording 56 songs on 62 rolls of tape.[9] Costs for the recording sessions reached between $700,000 and $1,000,000.[7] Wainwright admitted that he and Brion took their time recording the album in Los Angeles, and considered the extended time a "blessing" and "luxury", claiming that "most people have two weeks to record their first album".[8] According to Wainwright, Waronker "didn't care how long it took, as long as we were doing good work."[9] Waronker was pleased with the final product, and he and Wainwright agreed on the twelve tracks that made up the album.[10]

Photograph of a man
Many of the album's tracks were produced by Jon Brion (pictured in 2004).

Songs on the album were produced by Brion, except "In My Arms" was produced and mixed by Marchand, and "Millbrook" and "Baby" were produced by Brion and Van Dyke Parks.[11] Waronker served as the executive producer. Rufus Wainwright was recorded mostly in Los Angeles studios—Ocean Way studios 3 and 7, Sunset Sound Factory, Sunset Sound, Media Vortex, Hook Studios, Groove Masters, Red Zone, Sony, The Palindrome Recorder, and NRG Recording Services—although recording also took place in Marchand's Wild Sky in Morin-Heights, Quebec.[9][11] Parks conducted his orchestrations at Studio B in the Capitol Studios complex.[9]

Wainwright and Brion did not always get along, the latter admitting to The New York Times: "Rufus had all these beautiful songs but every time the vocals would kick in, he'd write some complicated keyboard part so you couldn't hear them. He wasn't interested in listening to ideas about simplifying arrangements."[9] The duo, with Ethan Johns, also contributed the songs "Le Roi D'Ys" and "Banks of the Wabash" (both "contemporary" cover versions) to the 1997 soundtrack to the film The Myth of Fingerprints.[12] Johns later considered "Le Roi D'Ys", recorded in around six hours, to be one of his favorite tracks by Wainwright.[10]

Rufus Wainwright was released on May 19, 1998, through DreamWorks. Following the album's release, which earned him mostly positive reviews, Wainwright contributed to

Gap television advertisement in which he performed Frank Loesser's 1947 song "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"[14][15] In 1999, he was one of several featured artists promoted by Best Buy as part of a campaign to promote young talent.[16] The album was re-issued in 2008 in LP form through the record label Plain Recordings.[1]

Songs

Photograph of a seated man
"Foolish Love" was arranged by Van Dyke Parks (pictured in 2004).

The "neo-operatic" opening track "Foolish Love", arranged by Van Dyke Parks, was described by AllMusic contributor Matthew Greenwald as a "lush, orchestral-soaked ballad, with incredible strings".[17] He asserted that Wainwright's lyrics took the form of a letter to himself, defining his goals and "sense of purpose".[17] The song "Danny Boy", with its "fabulous wordplay that stays literate and easy to understand at the time", contains "subtle" horn lines and sampled percussion. The song alludes to Wainwright's homosexuality, which Greenwald considered a "brave move".[18] According to biographer Kirk Lake, "Danny Boy" is a companion piece to "Foolish Love" and together they represent the start and end of a relationship between a gay and a straight man.[19] Danny, the straight "drug-addled" title figure with whom Wainwright had a three-year relationship, is the subject of both songs in addition to others on the album; he appears in the album's collage artwork.[19][20] Wainwright sings of being so blinded by love that he fails to notice the "ship with eight sails" threatening to come around the bend, a reference to Bertolt Brecht's 1928 musical The Threepenny Opera.[19]

The chorus in "April Fools" begins with an "unusually upbeat attitude" and was considered by Greenwald to be the most accessible track on the album.[21] The song showcases Jim Keltner's drum performance as well as Wainwright's piano playing.[21] Driven by Wainwright's guitar playing, "In My Arms" was described by Greenwald as a "forlorn", Spanish-influenced ballad that sounded as though it "could have been recorded in France in the 1920s".[22] The song "Millbrook" is an ode to his boarding school compatriots.[23] Wainwright has admitted to being "upset and drunk" when recording the final take.[24] "Baby", which has been considered one of the most melancholic songs on the album, contains "oddly placed" and "slightly quirky" major seventh chords. Greenwald called the lyrics "a stream-of-consciousness pleasure, relating the confusing and intoxicating emotions of young love".[25]

A woman in dark clothing behind a microphone stand on a stage; her eyes are closed, and she is playing an accordion
Kate McGarrigle, Wainwright's mother and subject of the song "Beauty Mark", performing in 2008

"Beauty Mark" is an ode to Wainwright's mother, the title referring to the beauty mark above her lip.[26] The song is one of the few up-tempo tracks on the album and contains multiple keyboard overdubs by Brion.[26] Chris Yurkiw of the Montreal Mirror considered the track to be the most moving love song on the album, with an "overt and open-hearted" reference to his homosexuality: "I may not be so manly, but still I know you love me."[27] Wainwright's Summer Stage performance of "Beauty Mark" appears on his 2005 DVD All I Want.[28] In "Barcelona", Wainwright recalls a love affair that took place in the city of the same name.[29] The song is loosely about AIDS and contains the Italian language lyric "Fuggi, regal fantasima", taken from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Macbeth. According to Wainwright, the line appears in a scene when "Macbeth is going mad and sees the ghost, and in [Wainwright's] mind the ghost was AIDS."[27] "Matinee Idol" is about the rise and fall of an entertainment figure, inspired by the death of actor River Phoenix.[30][31] According to Greenwald, the musical song has a "1920s, cabaret musical feel".[30]

"Damned Ladies" is a slow ballad about the "beloved yet doomed ladies of opera".[32] Wainwright said the following of "Damned Ladies", which contains references to nine opera heroines: "In the song, I lament how these women are constantly dying brutal deaths, which I can see coming but cannot stop. It gets me every time."[19] Greenwald described "Sally Ann" as a 1920s love ballad of "lost love and emotional regret".[33] The melody in "Imaginary Love", the album's closing track, contains sixth and major seventh chords.[34]

Promotion

Photograph of a woman on a stage holding a microphone
No Doubt's Gwen Stefani (pictured in 2015) made a cameo appearance in the music video for "April Fools", which was partly filmed in her house.

Wainwright acknowledged that his debut album was "not a single driven album"; no singles were released from it.[35] To promote the album, a music video was produced for the song "April Fools".[36] Directed by Sophie Muller, the video features Wainwright in Los Angeles "amidst a clique of classic opera characters" such as Madame Butterfly, attempting to prevent each of them from committing suicide. However, in each instance he arrives too late.[35] The video also contains cameo appearances by No Doubt's Gwen Stefani, a friend of Muller's, and Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, a high school acquaintance and former roommate of Wainwright's. Part of the video was filmed in Stefani's house.[35]

Wainwright performed "Beauty Mark" on

Today, the American morning news and talk show.[37] He also taped an episode of MTV's television program 120 Minutes to promote the album, which aired on March 28, 1999.[38] An advertisement in Billboard promoting the album also referred to appearances on CBS News Sunday Morning, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Late Show with David Letterman, and Sessions at West 54th.[39]

In the year prior to the album's release, Wainwright opened for artists such as Barenaked Ladies and Sean Lennon. On March 1, 1999, Wainwright began his first tour as a headlining act in Hoboken, New Jersey. During that month, Wainwright toured throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic states, Ontario (Ottawa and Toronto), Quebec (Montreal), the southern United States (Nashville, and Atlanta), and the midwestern United States (Cincinnati, Chicago, and Pontiac).[35] Wainwright continued to tour throughout the month of April before heading to Europe.[35] Stops were mostly along the West Coast, including four in California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. Three concerts were also held in western Canada, including Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary.[40]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
The Baltimore Sun[41]
Entertainment WeeklyA−[42]
Houston Chronicle[43]
Los Angeles Times[44]
NME7/10[45]
Rolling Stone[46]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[47]
Spin7/10[48]
The Village VoiceB+[49]

Overall, reception of the album was positive. Speaking of second-generation artists emerging around the same time, AllMusic's Jason Ankeny wrote that Wainwright "deserves to be heard regardless of his family tree". Furthermore, Ankeny complimented the musician for his songwriting abilities and his "knack for elegantly rolling piano melodies and poignantly romantic lyrics".[1] Music journalist Robert Christgau characterized Wainwright as a "mind-boggling original" whose talent is "too big to let pass".[49] Los Angeles Times critic Marc Weingarten found that the "abiding, uncynical" view of love expressed in Wainwright's lyrics does not come off as "mawkish" due to his considerable skills as a songwriter and arranger.[44] NME reviewer John Mulvey called the album "floridly impersonal" and "grandiosely arranged", but also criticized Wainwright for being "too overwrought and naff".[45] Greenwald complimented Martha's backing vocals on the song "In My Arms", as well as Parks' "positively sterling" string arrangement on "Millbrook".[22][23] Furthermore, he praised the vocal duet between Rufus and Martha on "Sally Ann", claiming that a similar sibling performance had not been heard since The Everly Brothers.[33] The album's cabaret elements and 1970s singer-songwriter style drew comparisons to Cole Porter and Joni Mitchell.[6] Josh Kun of Salon.com wrote that Wainwright poetically incorporated "foolish love and fantasy love, healing love and destructive love and love that makes you want to lose your sense of self just so you can find it again." Kun asserted that the songs were "built on a similar set of angled melodies and hairpin turns of phrase", and that each "succeeds as its own distinctly intimate portrait of emotion and desire."[50]

Commercial reception

Album sales were limited—by March 1999 only 35,000 copies had been sold.

Top Heatseekers chart, and Rolling Stone named him 1998's Best New Artist.[59][60] The January 19, 1999 CMJ New Music Report showed that Rufus Wainwright spent nine weeks on CMJ Radio 200 reaching a peak position of number 52, five weeks on CMJ Code Radio reaching a peak position of number 42, as well as nine weeks on CMJ Triple A reaching a peak position of number 9.[61]

Track listing

All songs written by Wainwright. Track listing adapted from AllMusic.[1]

  1. "Foolish Love" – 5:46
  2. "Danny Boy" – 6:12
  3. "April Fools" – 5:00
  4. "In My Arms" – 4:08
  5. "Millbrook" – 2:11
  6. "Baby" – 5:13
  7. "Beauty Mark" – 2:14
  8. "Barcelona" – 6:53
  9. "Matinee Idol" – 3:08
  10. "Damned Ladies" – 4:07
  11. "Sally Ann" – 5:01
  12. "Imaginary Love" – 3:28
Bonus track
  • "A Bit of You" – 5:00 (Japan)[62]

In May 2023, a new remastered version was released for the album's 25th anniversary, with remasters of the original album, songs previously released on the 2011 box set House of Rufus, and three new tracks labeled as session outtakes. The track list consists of the original album plus the following tracks:[63]

  1. "Hankering" (2023 Remaster)
  2. "Saint James Infirmary" (2023 Remaster)
  3. "More Wine" (Session Outtake)
  4. "Fame Into Love Into Death" (2023 Remaster)
  5. "One More Chance" (2023 Remaster)
  6. "A Bit of You" (2023 Remaster)
  7. "Dreams and Daydreams" (2023 Remaster)
  8. "Miss Otis Regrets" (2023 Remaster)
  9. "So Fine" (Session Outtake)
  10. "Come" (Session Outtake)

Personnel

Credits adapted from AllMusic and the album liner notes.[1][11]

See also

References

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Works cited

External links