Thankfully, I won't be writing about 'Want Two'. I'll be writing about 'Want One', its predecessor, one of the most glorious, imaginative, moving and beautiful albums of this century.
There are different ways of looking at the fact that people have vastly differing tastes in music - and I can cope with pretty much all of it, without resorting to the idea that "mine is better". Without being that way inclined myself, I can hear and understand how people are fans of everything from classical to jazz to house music to cheesy pop to overblown power balladeering. I get where the kicks are got. But the fact that anyone, any single person on the planet, might prefer 'Want Two' to 'Want One' (as is definitely the case, as I once casually mentioned on a music comments page what a poor follow up 'Want Two' was, to be met by several affronted responses) makes me only believe that some people are aliens. Aliens without ears sent to corrupt and destroy.
I heard you, Rufus. I heard you say how 'Want Two' highlighted a different side to your songwriting, something darker, more atmospheric, more experimental, but how, how can it be anything but the shabby, half-written offcuts, when so many songs from 'Want One' are so grand and perfectly formed and nothing from 'Want Two' is remotely memorable, when the lyrics seem tossed off and cheap, when everything fades to a miserable blur.
It pretty much killed Rufus for me. There've been three more self-written albums since, two mediocre collections intended to be grand fully formed statements 'Release the Stars' and 'Out of the Game', one a spare collection of piano ballads 'Songs for Lulu'. The latter has several lovely affecting moments, is twice the album with half the fuss of 'Want Two', but, in all, nothing he's done since has touched 'Want One'.
Why am I being negative? What's the problem? Maybe Rufus isn't as much of a polymath as he thinks, maybe he has a problem with quality control. There was a documentary where he collaborated with Robbie Williams' writing partner Guy Chambers to write a song, and at one point, in conversation about the song's progression, Chambers just said "Don't bore us, get to the chorus". At which point Rufus stopped in his tracks and said something along the lines of "That's brilliant, let's build the song around that". Now I'm not saying it's wrong of him not to be aware of the Greatest Hits of Roxette, which bear that famously daft moniker, but i'm saying that somewhere along the line, something should have happened to stop the resulting song, with that refrain all over it, appearing on an actual album. Maybe cool and naff shouldn't matter, but hearing it, I just felt that the whole world was in on a joke Rufus Wainwright wasn't in on. Oh, I don't know.
Let's get back to the positives. 'Want One' is the third solo album. I loved the first half of the debut, self-titled one, but I felt it tailed off. The second one, 'Poses', was, though critically acclaimed and a breakthrough of sorts, a bit disappointing for me, a bit saggy in the middle. 'Want One' is the one, the one where he gets it all right, where he is both his parents' child, his sister's brother, the prodigy, the showtuner, the crossover man, the heartbreaker, the orchestrator and the chronicler of the times.
It starts wonderfully and ends even better. 'Dinner at Eight', the closing track about an awkward meal with his father, gets me every time. It's the best song Andrew Lloyd Webber never wrote. It epitomises what Rufus Wainwright is good at - confession in a grand form.
The album shows that same gift in various different modes, from sharp powerpop to laconic singer-songwriter and grand torch song.
There are almost no underweight songs on the album - I could do without 'Natasha' and personally am not a massive fan of 'Vibrate', which I find pretty trite, but I know it's a bit of a fan favourite.
It's an album which strikingly captures New York - it came out three or four years before I went there for the first time, but the reality of it certainly chimed with that album for me. '11.11' explicitly references the 9/11 attacks, but not in a maudlin or obvious way.
At the time, I assumed Rufus Wainwright the pop songwriter has found his niche and would go from strength to strength, but it hasn't really happened like that. This is, in some ways, his most opulent and ambitious album, but often it's that same opulence and ambition that brings him down elsewhere. He also writes rubbish songs about other famous people who aren't members of his family, whether it's Tulsa (Brandon Flowers), Me and Liza (Minnelli) or Memphis Skyline (Jeff Buckley). What could be better than a Rufus Wainwright song about Jeff Buckley? What, in truth, is worse? Almost nothing, ever.
OK, there we go, a bit of a gripey Saturday moan for a fine artist. Here's a big, fun compilation to make us all feel better about Rufus Wainwright.
Foolish Love
14th Street
In My Arms
Poses
Danny Boy
Going to a Town
One Man Guy
Sonnet 20
I Don't Know What It Is
Zebulon
Want
April Fools
Movies of Myself
Oh What a World
Vicious World
11.11
Barcelona
Dinner at Eight
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