Rufus Wainwright
Hearing it from an acclaimed singer/songwriter who’s currently working on an opera, you’d hardly expect the fawning anthem “Tulsa” (“Your suit was the whitest thing since you know who / I feel that that savior I have mentioned may be you / And who would have thought that I’d owe it all to Tulsa?”) to be about, of all people, Brandon Flowers of The Killers. “I spent one night with him at a bar, swooning over him along with everybody else,” jokes Rufus Wainwright.
In fact, Wainwright—son of singer/songwriter Loudon—wrote most of the songs on his new record, Release The Stars, for friends and contemporaries, including some other children of musicians. The string-adorned “Nobody’s Off The Hook” is about Teddy Thompson, son of Richard, and the triumphant title track is about his relationship with longtime friend Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard. According to Wainwright, the shift in subject matter is part accident and partly a natural consequence of arriving at a more emotionally relaxed place. “I just realized I couldn’t be so precious about my intentions,” he says.
Release The Stars is Wainwright’s first self-produced record. While the original plan was to make a more stripped-down, darker follow-up to the extravagant Want One and Want Two, the new album turned into something just as huge. “When I went in [to the studio this time],” he says, “I was this athletic animal that had to really lay everything out on the line.” The result is another installment of Wainwright’s signature fusion of pop and operatics, but the music comes off as less self-conscious under his total artistic control.
“I think it’s everything that Rufus has ever wanted to do, and everything he should do,” says his sister Martha, who sings on the record. “It’s the truest expression of his songwriting, for better or for worse.”
Since his last pair of records, Wainwright has picked up an extracurricular activity that helped shape the sound of Release The Stars. He reenacted Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall during two sold-out nights in New York last year, along with three more shows in London and Paris this past February. In September, he’ll perform the show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Garland is one of Wainwright’s musical idols, and he wears the influence proudly, taking advantage of the emotional power of theatrical vocals without being saccharine or contrived.