Want Two came out a year after Want One, and the main distinction I’d draw between the two albums is that this one takes a more feminine perspective while the first was more masculine.
That dichotomy is borne out in the cover art… Want One depicting Wainwright dressed as a knight in a suit of armor while Want Two depicts him as a lady in waiting. In an embarrassing show of homophobia, the record company released Want Two with a giant sticker of critics quotes placed directly over Wainwright in drag. As if anybody buying his album would be scared off by that image?
Another of the Want One tunes that immediately grabbed me and refused to let go, ‘Beautiful Child’ is a hurricane of a song with so much going on at once that it threatens to spin off into oblivion almost every second it’s on. But somehow it tiptoes on that edge and manages to never fall off.
It’s appropriate that chance has put me in a position to choose as my 300th Song of the Day a tune I consider one of my very favorites ever.
Three years later, in 2001, Wainwright released his second album, Poses. I remember buying the CD during a trip to San Francisco and listening to it for the first time on headphones in our hotel room. An unaccompanied man buying a Rufus Wainwright album in San Francisco — that’s probably the most conspicuously gay thing I’ve done apart from watching Brokeback Mountain alone in Coconut Grove. And sleeping with that guy that time…
OK, folks… it’s time for all my faithful readers to run screaming. I hope this week’s blog entries reach beyond my usual audience, because I’ve found that I am very much alone in my love of Rufus Wainwright. 
