• Rolling Stone (6/11/98, p.122) - 3.5 Stars (out of 5) - "...his incandescent pop songwriting, piano-based melodies and cool, brooding tenor combine on compositions that range from droll lounge ballads...to orchestral noir....if the songs...remind you of old pop standards, it's because they're so damn classy."
  Spin (1/99, p.91) - Ranked #17 on Spin's list of "Top 20 Albums of '98."
  Spin (7/98, pp.122-124) - 7 (out of 10) - "...his talent is huge, and so original that trendmongers who make it their business to announce a pop revolution every fiscal quarter are unlikely to understand it....The nice thing about Wainwright's lyricism is that he's definitely no ironist. On the contrary, he's in love with beauty..."
  Entertainment Weekly (5/22/98, pp.68-69) - "...RUFUS WAINWRIGHT often feels like the soundtrack to a never-released film from the '30s...the album is utterly charming, and Wainwright has managed to avoid the hokey, wax-museum tendencies of a Michael Feinstein. Roll over, Chuck Berry, and tell Irving Berlin the news." - Rating: A-

Although Rufus Wainwright is the son of singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle, since the 1990s he has firmly established his own musical presence. Though he's an introspective troubadour, he looks back beyond the folk and rock influences of his parents to the golden age of pop songwriting  la Cole Porter and the Gershwins. His keening, diva-manqu vocals and elegantly melodic compositions are as far from "rock" as any pop-based music can be. If he has any antecedents in the pop world, they would be similarly quirky L.A. songwriters of a previous era such as Van Dyke Parks (who co-produced Wainwright's debut album) and Randy Newman. His open homosexuality has endeared him to many in the gay community.