Rufus Wainwright has always lived dangerously, but, with a new album and enjoying a stable relationship, he's happy to take a longer view, writes Guy Blackman.
You always get two options with Rufus Wainwright. The 33-year-old quasi-pop star lives a kind of dual life, poised halfway between the two sides of his nature: one lofty and serious, the other sharp and wickedly funny.
For proof, just look at the first of which features him posing as proud Sir Lancelot, sword in hand, the second as his jilted girlfriend the Lady of Shalott.
So it makes sense that Wainwright's ambitious new album, Release the Stars, his fifth since debuting in 1998, was recorded in Berlin for two equally important reasons.
sensibility, so I wanted to steep myself in some of the same air that all my favourite crotchety old composers enjoyed," he says from New York, yawning offhandedly through our brief conversation.
"That was one reason, but then, on the other hand, I had just hooked up with a German guy, who's now my boyfriend."
This is the charm of Wainwright. His flamboyant gestures, cutting humour and revealing honesty.
Release the Stars is lyrics such as "You can go out dancing...
and I'll shed a tear between my legs", or "I'm opening the door wide to the ballroom, Naturally, then, the New York-born, Montreal-raised singer's level. It was both a sincere response to the music's dazzle and complexity, and a way to set himself apart from his divorced showbiz parents.
tradition, spinning arch tales of misery and dysfunction over him from the mundane into a world of rarefied emotion.
grandiose sentiment, even the grandiose sentimentality," he says with a flourish. "But I was studying piano and composition and I failed out of music school, 'cause I didn't practise enough."
explained by Wainwright's constant near-success, the same kind of careers of his parents.
Wainwright remains in the public eye, championed by more famous artists, such as Elton John and the Pet Stars), putting out high-sheen, expensive-sounding records on an uncharacteristically supportive major label, but has never come close to having a hit. The best he has managed was a No 60 Billboard placing for Want One, in 2003. So, although his ego is inflated, it's continually pierced by self-deprecation.
"I think at this point it's a missing link in my career," Wainwright says of commercial success, sounding not quite nonchalant enough to be convincing. "I certainly can survive without it, and quite comfortably because of all the other work that I do, but it's just the one notch that hasn't been crossed off..
.in the prison of the music business."
Hallelujah for the Shrek soundtrack, although his songs appear in films as diverse as Gangs of New York, by the New York Met, but casually deflects questions on this topic, preferring to focus on the new album.
"The opera world takes years. I'm still a pop star for now..
.," he yawns.
usual combination of gravity and mischief.
"If anything, they like having me around just to give their company a certain sheen, a healthy coat you could say," he jokes. "But, actually, my present position is very surreal. I've always done what I wanted to do.
I write pop songs, but I don't really write with radio in mind. And I've somehow gotten away with doing that, with massive album budgets, homosexual lyrics and political statements."
In Australia, he is outshone by the career of his feisty younger sister Martha, who crept up on him to release her first solo album in 2005 at the age of 29, and has amassed quite a following here.
"She's very sweet, Martha, and she's doing so incredibly well, it's really exciting," he says, once again slightly unconvincing. Later, when he describes their childhood together, he says, "I was always very protective, so much so that sometimes she finds it hard to remember. I would always protect Martha, and Martha would always protect Martha!
Like all good little sisters do."
of mainstream pop music is a significant achievement, given his position as a gay artist in a very straight industry.
completely out of the closet in the mainstream," he says.
"And I have survived, and I think that's an important litmus test for how a society is doing. I feel like a kind of exotic toad, who, if he goes extinct, it means there are problems brewing."
A few years back, there were moments when Wainwright's extinction seemed imminent, although the music industry was only secondarily to blame.
In fact, a close study of the Lady of Shallott, as portrayed on the cover of Want Two reveals more about Wainwright's dual nature.
Readers of Tennyson's famous poem of the lady in the high tower, looking out mournfully as Lancelot rides by, have often posed the distance, as an artist would, or by living life to its fullest?
Wainwright's answer to this question underpins his recovery, over the past five years, from drug addiction and sexual debauchery, leading to the comparative serenity found on Release the Stars.
In late 2002, after the singer woke up temporarily blind from the previous night's crystal meth binge, and spent a week hallucinating visions of his father at every turn, he checked himself into rehab, beginning a slow process of withdrawal manageable.
On the new album, he addresses this topic with the track Sanssouci, casting himself as a modern day Lady of men head off for a night out (although, in typical Wainwright fashion, the club they're going to is the summer palace of King Frederick the Great). "Who will be at Sanssouci tonight?
The boys that made me lose the blues...
and then my eyesight," he "Only from the window you can see them. Once the door is open, all will vanish. Ain't nobody at Sanssouci tonight.
"
So, after his years of excess, Rufus has made a certain peace with his divided soul, these days smoking a few cigarettes and living quietly with his German boyfriend Jorn Weisbrodt, who worked "I was a real card-carrying member of the whorish set, and I still have that little guy running around in my underpants," says the singer. "But I was like, 'Look, I'm 30-years-old, I should get into a relationship now, first of all just to see what it's all about, and second of all, if I leave the relationship I'll still be 50, and going to a bar."
Then, alternating as always between flippant and heartfelt, Wainwright returns to the serious side of his statement.
"I've had a lot of men in my life, and I guess you can just keep having more if you want, but to have someone at home waiting for you who really cares about you, there's something very supportive about that," he says. "It's comforting to know that there's that giant living in the cave."
15.
sentimental and spiteful songs about each other for 30 years.
1975, Loudon on Rufus: Rufus Is a Tit place at his mother's breast. "The doctor says I'm oral/ And I believe it's true/ Ah son, you look so satisfied/ I envy you.
" Inherent irony now apparent to all.
1976, Kate on Loudon: Go Leave
A song so emotional that Kate won't sing it live, Go Penny Arcade while Kate was pregnant with Martha.
"Go, leave, she's better than me/ Or at least she is stronger/ She can make it last longer.
.."
1992, Loudon on Martha: I'd Rather Be After Martha, then 14, spent a tumultuous year living with her father in New York, Loudon wrote this line: "I'd rather be lonely/ known.
" Martha discovered it was about her when she was working as dad's backing vocalist, and he told the audience. Classy.
2003, Rufus on Loudon: Dinner at only to be threatened with death and thrown out of the house.
"Why you were the one long ago/ You left me."
2004, Rufus on Martha: Little Not content with dissing Dad, Rufus takes playful aim at Martha, if she pursues a musical career. "History is on my side/ So complain, have no shame/ And remember that your brother is a boy.
"
2005, Martha on Loudon: Bloody Mother F---ing she often claims is more about her than anyone else. But when she you/ You bloody mother f---ing asshole," nobody is fooled.
Keywords: New York, Rather Be, Mother f, Rufus Wainwright, Bloody Mother, Bloody Mother f
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