Best Songs of 2010 – Honorable Mentions

Rufus Wainwright released his most straight-forward and personal album this year. Titled All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, it featured just vocals and piano on a series of ballads inspired by the illness of his mother (who died shortly before the album’s release).

It’s a touching and contemplative work, though it doesn’t represent what I love best about Wainwright. I’m drawn to his brash theatricality and the way he blends horns, strings, choirs, banjos, you name it, into his complex compositions. On this album he leaves his bag of tricks behind, which is effective in its own way but not as much fun.

My favorite track from All Days Are Nights is ‘Martha,’ one of the only songs to directly address his mother’s illness. It takes the form of an answering machine message left for his sister Martha.

The first two verses capture shifting relationships in the wake of a parent’s sickness. “Neither of us is really that much older than each other anymore,” he says, alluding perhaps to a childhood when the older sibling sometimes played guardian. Addressing his strained relationship with their father Loudon, Rufus says “there’s not much time for us to really be that angry at each other anymore.”

The second two verses are more intriguing and I’m not entirely sure when to make of them. My take is that they describe life going on despite the coming absence of their mother.