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I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms.

Rufus Wainwright

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Rufus Wainwright
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: July 22
Composer
Musician
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Rhinebeck (village)
New York
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright
Track
Usurper
Musical
Usurpers
Terms
Dilettante
Side
Dilettantes
Sides
Imposter
Term
Technically
Wrong
Tracks
Come
Regarded

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I believe in freedom Freedom's apparently all I need But who's ever been free in this world? Who has never had to bleed in this world?
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My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
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And you will believe in love And all that it's supposed to be But just until the fish start to smell And you're struck down by a hammer.
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When I'm in the classical world, I really treat it as exactly classical and I don't try and spruce it up or jazz it up or make it easier for the masses.
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I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a 'mummy's boy.'
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I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.
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The operas I listen to aren't in English, and I want to listen to my opera after I'm done with it. I want to have the desire to play it on the stereo. To me, the language is part of the mystery.
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I made the decision to take on board the critical feedback. Reviews are something you can easily ignore as a performer or writer but I chose to not ignore them here and I think that I benefited. I think I'm stronger for it - and I have a tougher skin as a result.
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Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces.
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I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.
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You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.
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I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.
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I've developed a bit of a fascination with John Denver. I always thought he was kind of tacky and somewhat revolting and had a kind of simplistic weirdness, but on second listen, he actually did have an incredible voice, and the blatant naiveté of his work is straight-edge, in a way.
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And I am left behind Corrupted crushed and blind All for a dream That in truth was never really mine.
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I don't know if it will be my big comeback, but I think it is a statement - that I am a self-sustaining, vibrant, long-term artist, and I'm not going away! And if you don't give me credit, then the musical gods will!
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I find so many songwriters today are missing an element ... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.
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As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.
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Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.
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I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart's and I have to go to Montauk.
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I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.
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