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Song of the Day #301: ‘Beautiful Child’ – Rufus Wainwright

wrightAnother 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.

I suspect this song will make Amy want to slap him. 🙂

Wainwright has described this as a “happy apocalyptic” song and I think that’s just about exactly right. It deals with the end of a life, the end of religion, the end of the world… but in terms of rebirth and enlightenment. It’s simultaneously disdainful of organized religion and deeply religious itself.

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Song of the Day #300: ‘Go or Go Ahead’ – Rufus Wainwright

wantoneIt’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.

Indeed, Rufus Wainwright’s third album Want One is itself on my short list of very favorite albums. Want One was released in 2003, two years after Poses, as the first half of a two-album arc. Want Two would hit stores a year later, but I’ll save that for another post. The two albums don’t have many specific connections apart from their cover art.

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Song of the Day #299: ‘California’ – Rufus Wainwright

posesThree 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…

Poses shed a lot of the baroque instrumentation of Wainwright’s debut album in favor of a more polished pop sound. Not that it is mainstream by any stretch… his trademark strings and cabaret backing vocals are present on most tracks.

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Song of the Day #298: ‘Foolish Love’ – Rufus Wainwright

rufusOK, 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.

Alone in my circle of family and friends, that is. Out there on the interwebs, of course, there are legions of people just like me, people who swoon at the romanticism and theatricality of a man who’s a little Cole Porter, a little Puccini, a little Michael Stipe… and all Rufus.

And yes, I’m secure enough in my sexuality to admit to swooning over a flamboyantly gay man. What of it?

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Song of the Day #297: ‘Low’ – Cracker

crackerI have had this song sitting in my drafts queue for literally all of 2009.

I added it there on the 30th of December, 2008, with the intent of featuring it soon thereafter. But for one reason or another I kept finding new songs to highlight instead. Well, for one reason, really… no need for another: I don’t have anything interesting to say about the song other than that I dig it.

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