Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright was born on July 22,1973 and is a Canadian-American singer, songwriter, and composer.
54 Facts About Rufus Wainwright
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Rufus Wainwright has recorded 10 studio albums and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks.
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Rufus Wainwright has written two classical operas and set Shakespeare's sonnets to music for a theatre piece by Robert Wilson.
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Rufus Wainwright was born in Rhinebeck, New York, USA, to folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Rufus Wainwright III.
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Rufus Wainwright's parents divorced when he was three, and he lived with his mother in Montreal, Canada for most of his youth.
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Rufus Wainwright's father is a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the 17th century Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, later New York.
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Rufus Wainwright attended high school at the Millbrook School in New York, and later briefly studied piano at McGill University in Montreal.
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Rufus Wainwright began playing the piano at age six, and started touring at age 13 with "The McGarrigle Sisters and Family", a folk group featuring Rufus, his sister Martha, his mother Kate, and aunt Anna.
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Rufus Wainwright was nominated for a 1990 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year.
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Rufus Wainwright became interested in opera during his adolescent years, and the genre strongly influences his music.
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Rufus Wainwright has been reported to have stated that he remained celibate for five or seven years after the incident, and eventually became promiscuous.
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Rufus Wainwright relocated to Los Angeles that year and began his first studio album, 1998's Rufus Wainwright.
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Rufus Wainwright recorded 56 songs in total, on 62 rolls of tape.
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Rufus Wainwright's self-titled debut received critical acclaim; Rolling Stone recognized it as one of the best albums of the year, and named the singer "Best New Artist" of the year.
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Rufus Wainwright won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music Album and a Juno Award for Best Alternative Album.
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Rufus Wainwright toured with Sean Lennon in 1998 and began his first headline tour later that year.
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In March 1999, Rufus Wainwright began a headlining tour in Hoboken, New Jersey.
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Rufus Wainwright lived in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City for six months, during which he wrote most of his second album.
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Rufus Wainwright became addicted to crystal meth in the early 2000s and temporarily lost his vision.
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Rufus Wainwright's addiction reached its peak in 2002, during what he described as "the most surreal week of my life".
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That same year, Rufus Wainwright made two major contributions as a solo vocalist to a pair of records: the Mercury Prize-winning Antony and the Johnsons' I am a Bird Now and Burt Bacharach's At This Time.
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The album was produced by Rufus Wainwright and featured Richard Thompson, friend Teddy Thompson, sister Martha Rufus Wainwright, mother Kate McGarrigle, Neil Tennant, Joan Wasser, Julianna Raye, Larry Mullins, and actress Sian Phillips.
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The accompanying world tour saw Rufus Wainwright visit North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, ending on February 14,2008, with a concert at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
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Rufus Wainwright later repeated his performance at the London Palladium, the Paris Olympia, and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
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The CD album, Rufus Wainwright Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, is a recording of his show at the New York venue.
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In December 2008 Rufus performed alongside his sister, Martha Wainwright, and mother, Kate McGarrigle, as well as many more of his family at the Knitting Factory in downtown Manhattan.
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In November 2009, Rufus Wainwright announced that he had finished recording his sixth studio album, and was calling it All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu.
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In December 2009, Rufus Wainwright appeared with sister Martha Rufus Wainwright and mother Kate McGarrigle at the Royal Albert Hall in London, raising $55,000 for the Kate McGarrigle Fund, which was established in 2008 to raise awareness of sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects connective tissue such as bone, muscle, nerves, and cartilage.
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In late 2010 Rufus Wainwright became engaged to his partner Jorn Weisbrodt.
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In 2011, Rufus Wainwright announced the birth of his first child, with childhood friend Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard Cohen.
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In July 2011 a 19-disc box set called House of Rufus Wainwright containing all his studio and live recordings as well as previously unreleased material was released.
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Rufus Wainwright recorded his seventh studio album with producer Mark Ronson.
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Rufus Wainwright described the new songs as more "danceable" than his previous material.
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In 2015, Rufus Wainwright launched a new version of his first opera, accompanied by a film directed by Francesco Vezzoli, featuring Cindy Sherman as the Prima Donna.
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Almost a year after releasing the stand-alone single "Sword of Damocles" in October 2018, Rufus Wainwright signed a record deal with music publisher and record label BMG Rights Management for a new album.
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On March 7,2023, Rufus Wainwright announced his upcoming studio album, Folkocracy, would be released in June 2023.
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On March 24,2023, Rufus Wainwright released the single "Dear World", a piano ballad about healing the world.
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Rufus Wainwright is an opera enthusiast and likes Franz Schubert's lieder.
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Rufus Wainwright's music has been described as "popera" or "baroque pop".
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Rufus Wainwright's work contains several recurring themes: opera, literature, pop culture, politics, and love.
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In Nick Hornby's book Slam, the child born to the young protagonists gets called "Rufus" because his mother listened to Rufus Wainwright while recovering from the ordeal of giving birth.
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Rufus Wainwright has publicly opposed 45th US President Donald Trump, addressing him in the music video for his song "Sword of Damocles" in 2018 and stating "It's impossible to minimise the ineptitude and pure evil of the Trump administration" in a 2020 interview with NME.
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Rufus Wainwright has appeared in the films The Aviator and Heights in addition to his role in Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller but said in a 2010 interview "I definitely enjoy seeing myself thirty feet high, but it's not something that I'm running toward passionately".
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Rufus Wainwright's recording of "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" plays during the closing credits of the film The History Boys.
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Rufus Wainwright is seen in the Denys Arcand film Days of Darkness, performing two arias.
46.
Stephen Petronio commissioned Rufus Wainwright to write a score for his dance production BLOOM, which was performed at Joyce Theater in New York in April 2006.
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In May 2006, Rufus Wainwright was one of three guests to star with the Pet Shop Boys in a concert at London's Mermaid Theatre.
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Rufus Wainwright covered the Pet Shop Boys' "Casanova in Hell".
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In June 2007, Rufus Wainwright was a part of the multi-artist True Colors Tour, which traveled through 15 cities in the United States and Canada.
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Rufus Wainwright continued to tour during 2007 and embraced forms of expression not usually part of mainstream American music concerts.
51.
In June 2012, Rufus Wainwright released a comedy video on the Funny or Die website, giving his interpretation of a number of jingles from chewing gum commercials.
52.
Also in 2012, Rufus Wainwright wrote and sang "Metaphorical Blanket" in the film Any Day Now.
53.
Rufus Wainwright won two Juno Awards for Best Alternative Album, one in 1999 for Rufus Wainwright and one in 2002 for Poses.
54.
Rufus Wainwright was nominated for a BRIT Award for Best International Male Artist in 2008 and a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2009 and 2020.