Rufus Wainwright Opens Up About Being an Openly Gay Artists in the ’90s – Billboard

Rufus Wainwright opens up about being one of the first openly gay major-label artists to succeed, the thinking behind his new album ‘Folkocracy’ and more!

Tetris Kelly:
What do you want to be remembered as?

Rufus Wainwright:
A great beauty? Hi. This is Rufus Wainwright and you’re watching Billboard News.

Tetris Kelly:
It’s Tetris with Billboard news. How you doing Rufus? Thanks for hanging out with us.

Rufus Wainwright:
Thank you for having me.

Tetris Kelly:
You got big things to celebrate. It’s been 25 years since you released your self titled debut, man. How’s it feel? 25 years later?

Rufus Wainwright:
It feels awful! No, no, I’m very proud and excited to be alive. And still making music and, and happy. And that first record I made has proven to have lasted and I worked very hard on it. It took me three years to make that first record. It costs a lot of money. It was with DreamWorks Records at the time who had a lot of money to pay for that kind of thing. It’s built to last perhaps.

Tetris Kelly:
You made changes to it. You’re re-releasing it? What’s gonna be different about the rerelease?

Rufus Wainwright:
We remastered it and then we also released some bonus material, other songs I did at the time. I think what’s interesting about the record is that it was made in the mid to late 90s. And it really was part of the last breath of sort of the grand record company/artist relationship where they would sort of just write all the checks and kind of let you do whatever you wanted to do. And they really didn’t expect you to be popular until your third or fourth album.

Watch the full interview above!