(born July 22, 1973) is a Grammy-nominated, Canadian-American singer-songwriter. He has recorded five albums of original music, EPs, and tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. Wainwright was born in Rhinebeck, New York, to folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III. His parents divorced when he ws three years old, and he lived with his mother in Montreal, Canada for most of his youth. Wainwright is both a U.S and Canadian citizen. He attended high school at the Millbrook School in upstate New York (which would later inspire his song “Millbrook”), and later briefly studied piano at Concordia and McGill Universities in Montr’eal. He began playing the piano at age six, and started touring at thirteen with “The McGarrigle Sisters and Family”, a folk group featuring Rufus, his sister Martha, his mother Kate, and aunt Anna. His song “I’m a-Runnin’”, which he performed in the film “Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller” at the age of fourteen, earned him a nomination for a 1989 Genie Award for Best Original Song. He was nominated for a 1990 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year. Wainwright came out as gay while a teenager. In 1999, he told “Rolling Stone” that his father recognized his homosexuality early on. “We’d drive around in the car, he’d play ‘Heart of Glass’ and I’d sort of mouth the words, pretend to be Blondie. Just a sign of many other things to come as well.” Wainwright later said in another interview that his “mother and father could not even handle me being gay. We never talked about it really.” Wainwright became interested in opera during his adolescent years, and the genre strongly influences his music. (For instance, the song “Barcelona” features lyrics from the libretto of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, “Macbeth”.) During this time, he became interested in ‘Edith Piaf, Al Jolson, and Judy Garland. At 14, Wainwright was sexually assaulted in London’s Hyde Park after picking up a man at a bar. He remained celibate for seven years after the incident, which he says led to his becoming promiscuous. In an interview years later, he described the event: “I said I wanted to go to the park and see where this big concert was going on. I thought it was going to be a romantic walk in the park, but he raped me and robbed me afterwards and tried to stangle me”. Wainwright states that he survived only by pretending to be an epileptic and faking a seizure. Wainwright identifies as “a complete libertarian”, and has stated, “I don’t think any government should encroach on what goes on in the bedroom at all.” In addition to his baritone singing voice, he plays piano and guitar, often switching between the two instruments when performing live. While some songs feature just Wainwright and his piano, his later work is often accompanied by rock instrumentation or a symphony orchestra, displaying complex layering and harmonies with an operatic feel. Wainwright is an opera fan and likes Franz Schubert’s “Lieder”. Some of Wainwright’s songs are described as “popera” (pop opera) or “baroque pop”. Many of his compositions are densely packed amalgams of strings, horns, operatic choruses, ragtime rhythms, with a warm vocal timbre. Wainwright’s oeuvre contains several recurring themes: opera, literature, pop culture, and more recently politics, attraction, yearning, and love (often unrequited love). In “Foolish Love”, Wainwright describes the joys of initial infatuation with stateside radio producer Jon W. Knowles, and in “The Art Teacher” he tackles a first-person infatuation between a schoolgirl and her teacher. Other songs address full-blown love and the consequences of falling out of love (”This Love Affair”, “Leaving for Paris”, and “Peach Trees”). Wainwright also sings about his family relationships. “Beauty Mark”, “Little Sister”, and “Dinner at Eight” address, respectively, his experiences with his mother, sisters, and father. Religion and religious imagery also appear in his music (”Agnus Dei”, “Gay Messiah”, and “Greek Song”). Wainwright also sings about experiences in the world and distant geography (”Oh What a World” and “April Fools”). Several songs address his experiences with crystal meth and rehab (”Go Or Go Ahead” and “I Don’t Know What It Is”). Wainwright wrote the song “Millbrook” about his high school, Millbrook School in affluent Millbrook, New York. The song “Matinee Idol” from that album was written about River Phoenix. “Memphis Skyline” is a tribute to the late singer Jeff Buckley, who drowned in Memphis in the Wolf River (a tributary of the Mississippi) on May 29, 1997. The two met briefly in the 1990s when Wainwright was an up-and-coming act. The song references “Hallelujah”, a Leonard Cohen song covered by Buckley (and later by Wainwright). The song “Sanssouci” (”carefree” in French) was inspired by 18th century Prussian monarch Frederick the Great’s Rococo summer palace of the same name in Potsdam, outside Berlin, Germany. “Tiergarten”, also from “Release the Stars”, refers to the Berlin Tiergarten, and is written about his boyfriend of three years, German arts administrator Jorn Weisbrodt.
