Rufus Wainwright’s new outlook

Rufus Wainwright is a new man, says Tim Adams in the London Observer. The singer-songwriter has given up his hard-partying ways, kicked an addiction to methamphetamine, and settled down with his first long-term boyfriend, theater producer Jörn Weisbrodt. At first, he was worried that all this clean living would be bad for his songwriting. “I would lose this dark lake of pain to drink from. But I needn’t have worried too much,” he says. “What I have found is that once you give up on a life, it doesn’t go away. You are always appeasing, or bargaining with, or neglecting that former self, the spirit who used to be behind the wheel, and would like to be still.” Still, he feels happy and secure enough to be contemplating fatherhood. “We’re exploring all options at the moment, and it’s very top-secret, but it’s certainly something I’m thinking of,” he says. “Once I was hanging out with Leonard Cohen and his daughter, and she was talking about this child she had known as a baby and how he was now grown up, and she said to her dad: ‘You know, it’s pretty amazing watching how the baby became a person.’ Leonard replied very dryly, as only he could: ‘It’s pretty much the only amazing thing there is.’

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up