Rufus Wainwright (album)

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 Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle and sister Martha Wainwright, began touring in his early teens with his family throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States. At age fourteen, his song "I'm a Runnin, written for the 1988 Canadian film Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller, earned him a Genie Award nomination for Best Achievement in Music – Original Song and a Juno Award nomination in 1990 for Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year. Wainwright attended McGill University in Montreal for a short time to study Classical music composition. With his mother's support, he began writing pop songs and learned how to play guitar. Wainwright started performing at the night club Sarajevo, and eventually recorded a demo tape with record producer Pierre Marchand, a family friend, who had worked with Kate and Anna and who later produced Wainwright's second studio album Poses. Songs were recorded at Marchand's studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, and no edits were made to the simple live tunes. The tape impressed Wainwright's father, who passed the songs along to producer Van Dyke Parks, who in turn presented them to DreamWorks executive Lenny Waronker. Waronker had signed McGarrigle to Warner Bros. Records in the 1970s. Wainwright acknowledged that having musicians as parents gave him a "foot in the door", but attributed his success to hard work. ==Development==

Wainwright was signed to DreamWorks in 1996. Waronker paired him with producer Jon Brion, and together they spent "most of 1996 and 1997" recording 56 songs on 62 rolls of tape. Costs for the recording sessions reached between $700,000 and $1,000,000. According to Wainwright, Waronker "didn't care how long it took, as long as we were doing good work." (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. 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. Johns later considered "Le Roi D'Ys", recorded in around six hours, to be one of his favorite tracks by Wainwright. In December 1998, Wainwright appeared in a Gap television advertisement in which he performed Frank Loesser's 1947 song "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" In 1999, he was one of several featured artists promoted by Best Buy as part of a campaign to promote young talent. The album was re-issued in 2008 in LP form through the record label Plain Recordings. ==Songs==

(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". He asserted that Wainwright's lyrics took the form of a letter to himself, defining his goals and "sense of purpose". 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. 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. 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. The song showcases Jim Keltner's drum performance as well as Wainwright's piano playing. The song "Millbrook" is an ode to his boarding school compatriots. Wainwright has admitted to being "upset and drunk" when recording the final take. "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". , 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. The song is one of the few up-tempo tracks on the album and contains multiple keyboard overdubs by Brion. Wainwright's Summer Stage performance of "Beauty Mark" appears on his 2005 DVD All I Want. In "Barcelona", Wainwright recalls a love affair that took place in the city of the same name. 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." According to Greenwald, the musical song has a "1920s, cabaret musical feel". 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." The melody in "Imaginary Love", the album's closing track, contains sixth and major seventh chords. In Japan, the album was released with the bonus track "A Bit of You". In May 2023, the album's 25th anniversary, a remastered version was released with songs previously released on the 2011 box set House of Rufus plus three session outtakes. The track list consists of the original album plus the tracks: "Hankering", "Saint James Infirmary", "More Wine", "Fame Into Love Into Death", "One More Chance", "A Bit of You", "Dreams and Daydreams", "Miss Otis Regrets", "So Fine", and "Come". For the album's cover, Wainwright recreated his original art using a photograph of him at age 50. ==Promotion==

'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. 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. He also taped an episode of MTV's television program 120 Minutes to promote the album, which aired on March 28, 1999. 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''. 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). Wainwright continued to tour throughout the month of April before heading to Europe. ==Critical reception==

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". Ann Powers, music critic for The New York Times, included the album at number five on her list of the Top 10 albums of 1998. The album was also included in The Village Voice 1998 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, which combined ballots from 496 critics. Rufus Wainwright was nominated four times by the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards, an organization that provided the foundation for the recognition of the excellence of LGBT artists. Wainwright received the award for Best New Artist, the album was nominated for Album of the Year, and "April Fools" was nominated for Video of the Year and Best Pop Recording. The GLAAD Media Awards, created by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to recognize and honor the mainstream media for their fair and accurate representations of the LGBT community, presented Wainwright with the award for Outstanding Music Album. At the Juno Awards of 1999, Rufus Wainwright earned Wainwright the Juno Award for Best Alternative Album. ==Commercial reception==

Album sales were limited—by March 1999 only 35,000 copies had been sold. In 2001, Michael Giltz of The Advocate wrote that Wainwright's biggest sales boost came from the Gap advertisement rather than radio play. Despite low sales, Wainwright reached number 24 on Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, and Rolling Stone named him 1998's Best New Artist. 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. ==Track listing==

All songs written by Wainwright. Track listing adapted from AllMusic. • "Foolish Love" – 5:46 • "Danny Boy" – 6:12 • "April Fools" – 5:00 • "In My Arms" – 4:08 • "Millbrook" – 2:11 • "Baby" – 5:13 • "Beauty Mark" – 2:14 • "Barcelona" – 6:53 • "Matinee Idol" – 3:08 • "Damned Ladies" – 4:07 • "Sally Ann" – 5:01 • "Imaginary Love" – 3:28 ==Personnel==

• Jon Brion – Chamberlin (1), accordion (1), marimba (1,9), vibes (1,10), bass guitar (2,9,12), baritone guitar (2,3,11), optigan (2), acoustic guitar (2,3,12), electric guitar (3), background vocals (3,12), percussion (3,8), timpani (7), crotales (7), celeste (7,10), temple blocks (7), assorted bells (7), tuned toms (8), mandolin (9), drums (9), tack piano (10) • Randy Brion – horn arrangement (2,11), conductor (2,11) • Yves Desrosiers – acoustic guitar (4), electric guitar (4), slide bass (4) • Marty Grebb – alto saxophone (9) • Glen Hollman – upright (1,7,12), mandolin bass (10) • Jim Keltner – drums (1–3,7,11,12) • Pierre Marchand – bass guitar (4), keyboards (4) • Van Dyke Parks – string arrangement (1,5,6), conductor (1,5,6) • Ash Sood – drums (4), percussion (4) • Benmont Tench – piano (3,11), Hammond organ (11) • Martha Wainwright – background vocals (3,4,11) • Rufus Wainwright – vocals (1–12), background vocals (3), piano (1,2,5-7,10,12), Chamberlin (1,8,9), tack piano (1,2,9), acoustic guitar (3,8,10,11), castanets (8), half-speed piano (1), humming (10) Credits adapted from AllMusic and the album liner notes. ==See also==