Release the Stars
album by Rufus Wainwright
Release the Stars is the fifth studio album by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, released through Geffen Records on May 15, 2007. Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant was the executive producer; the album was mixed by Record producer Marius de Vries and Andy Bradfield. Wainwright's most commercially successful album to date, Release the Stars charted in 13 countries, reaching Top 10 positions in Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom, and was certified gold in Canada and the UK. The album generated three singles: "Going to a Town", which peaked at number 54 on the UK Singles Chart, "Rules and Regulations", and "Tiergarten".
Wainwright planned to create a more simple piano and voice album originally, but began leaning towards more lush sounds once the recording process started. Guests on Release the Stars include: Richard Thompson, longtime friend and fellow singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson, family members Martha Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle, Neil Tennant, Joan Wasser, and actress Siân Phillips. The world tour supporting the album lasted from May 2007 to February 2008, and included appearances in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Wainwright received two Juno Award nominations for Release the Stars, including Adult Alternative Album of the Year and Songwriter of the Year, and won the Outstanding Music Artist award at the 19th GLAAD Media Awards.
Conception and development
"Initially, this was simply going to be an album of piano and voice", Wainwright stated in a May 2007 interview with The Independent's Nick Duerden. That was, however, until he visited Berlin, which influenced the album's lush sound. Wainwright declared, "Basically, a huge wave of German Romanticism descended on the recording process, and almost drowned me." Wainwright cited two reasons for the change in direction and the heightened dramatic flare: the cancer diagnosis received by his mother (folk musician Kate McGarrigle) during the album's genesis, which he found "fueled his creative intensity in some kind of displaced attempt to get her well", and the New York Metropolitan Opera's commissioning Wainwright to write an opera, making Release the Stars a way of training for such a large project.
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