“You can never publish my love,” 
Rogue Wave chants, in the song that 
the title of this series riffs on. Maybe 
that’s true, and we can never quite 
account for our love on paper or in 
print, but we sure can try. That’s what 
this series is devoted to: publishing our 
love. Us, the Arts section of The Michi-
gan Daily, talking about artists, some 
of the people we love the most. Perhaps 
these are futile approximations of love 
for the poet who told us we deserve to 
be heard, the director who changed the 
way we see the world, the singer we 
see as an old friend. But who ever said 
futile can’t still be beautiful?
The story of my love for Rufus 
Wainwright begins in a darkened 
auditorium. The crowd 
bustles, 
hushed giggles and whispers muted 
by the shuffle of feet returning to 
their spots. I was already seated, 
my face eerily blue as the light of 
my phone reflected back on me. The 
setlists for every previous artist lined 
the screen as my cursor dropped to 
the bottom. I don’t know anything 
by this guy, I thought. I didn’t know 
what he looked like, either, mistaking 
the guitar tech for the performer and 
prematurely clapping. On the second 

night of coverage for the Ann Arbor 
Folk Festival this year, I was expect-
ing more folk from the headliner. 
What I didn’t anticipate was some-
thing beyond any genre, a voice that 
would stick with me like a pleasant 
parasite for the foreseeable future.
I’m sure I had heard Wainwright’s 
music before in passing — The man 
is something of a musical unicorn, 
an artist Elton John once called “the 
greatest songwriter on the planet” 
and has released 10 albums, written 
two full-length operas and performed 
on five continents. Still, Wainwright 
is something of a well-kept secret for 
musicians and performers alike, as 
we cherish his success, but still hope 
to keep his genius to ourselves.
Rufus Wainwright isn’t just a sing-
er: He does everything, in a way you 
would never expect. His unpredict-
ability is delightful, his humor brash, 
his outlook both joyous and nihilistic. 
Everyone can get something out of 
his music, and the same person can 
gather different things from those 
songs throughout their life. Wain-
wright’s work is classic in that way, 
and translates to each era of growth 
like a well-loved novel might. 
So, when he finished his set that 
night in Ann Arbor, I turned to my fel-
low music writer to talk about it and 
realized that my face was wet with 
tears. The performance had been so 

moving that I hadn’t even realized I 
was crying in the first place. I have 
been in Hill Auditorium so many 
times that it barely feels like a venue 
anymore, but Wainwright changed 
that. My posture straightened, the 
beams vibrated with each note from 
his Steinway grand, his voice resonat-
ed through the half-shell auditorium 
like summer air. And from then on, I 
finally got it. 
All the things I hated about his 
voice with his first song of the set ― 
the nasality, the theatrical flair, the 
sarcasm in every word ― made sense 
by the end of the night. What Wain-
wright was doing wasn’t just putting 
on a show, but telling a drawn-out 
story of his life, of all of our lives in 
the microcosms of specific moments. 
From then on, I was hooked. 
His talent for capturing these 
moments, whether they are profound 
(“In the drifting white snow / You 
loved me” of “Dinner at Eight”), or 
darkly funny (“Now I’m drunk and 
wearing flip flops on Fifth Avenue” of 
“Poses”), is what makes Wainwright 
stand out. There are several artists 
from the early-aughts era he came up 
in who managed to fuse folk, rock and 
theatrics in the same way, like Regina 
Spektor and Imogen Heap, but no one 
does it quite as well as Rufus.
People tend to point to his musical 
heritage to divine the source of this 

talent, as he was parented by well-
known folk musicians Loudon Wain-
wright III and Kate McGarrigle, but 
I believe he is merely an unlikely 
product of his circumstances. He flit-
ted between Montreal and New York 
for much of his childhood, seeing the 
beauty and the ugliness of both cities 
in good time. By the time Wainwright 
reached adulthood, he was already 
fully self-realized, a proud gay man 
with a penchant for the weirder cor-
ners of this world. 
In one of his most well-known 
songs, “Cigarettes and Chocolate 
Milk,” Wainwright explains this 
plainly: “Everything it seems I like’s a 
little bit stronger / A little bit thicker, 
a little bit harmful for me.” The lyr-
ics dance over a polka piano beat, his 
languid baritone stretching across 
the notes like honey over toast. It just 
makes sense to the ears, like most 
of his work does. As a person who’s 
grown up around music for much of 
her life, listening to Wainwright’s 
songs is an equally inspiring and 
daunting experience.
His melodies aren’t obvious to the 
instrumentals, and sometimes a full 
horn section comes out of nowhere, 
but somehow, it works perfectly. He 
can blatantly steal a Spanish bolero 
beat (“Oh What A World”) and turn 
it into a meditation on modern life 
within five minutes. He can reap-
propriate a Beatles song (“Across the 

Universe”), a Leonard Cohen song 
(“Hallelujah”), and produce covers so 
convincing some people don’t realize 
they’re not his words. To me, Wain-
wright represents the infinite possi-
bilities of music, beyond what any of 
us could hum in the shower or think 
of in our wildest dreams. 
This translates beyond his studio 
recordings and into performance 
seamlessly. It’s why I cried in Hill 
Auditorium that night, and every 
time I’ve looked up live videos on 
YouTube since. I really can’t help 
it ― when someone captures the ups 
and downs of life in our fucked-up 
world so well, you have no choice but 
to let it take you on a ride. His songs 
feel like screaming out of windows 
on freeways, like walking through 
streetlight-dotted roads in the middle 
of the night, like tumbling out of the 
rain into a warm home.
His music is unabashedly truth-
ful, mixing the dirty laundry of real-
ity with the points of light along the 
way. And still, it never feels contrived. 
Wainwright knows how to write a 
song that will make you feel every-
thing at once, make everyone feel 
like a “beautiful child again.” From 
the soaring highs of happiness to the 
lowest lows of addiction and grief, he 
doesn’t hide anything. Wainwright 
embraces it, making the raw nerve of 
human emotion into a striking sculp-
ture of his own creation. 

7

Thursday, August 8, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

Wainwright: A renaissance
musician and songwriter

DESIGN BY KATHRYN HALVERSON

CLARA SCOTT 
Senior Arts Editor

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

