


While there’s a theme of sisters doing it for themselves to the new song, Wainwright doesn’t see the reverberations as particularly limited to the specific subject matter at hand. “And I started doing that years ago when I first came to Los Angeles to make my first album, and started to lean on the Brian Wilson philosophy of vocal stacking, so it’s something I’ve practiced for a long time and that people can now somewhat depend on.”

My latest album, ‘Unfollow the Rules,’ has a lot of harmonies like that on it,” he says. “That’s become a bit of a signature of mine. The luscious self-harmonies will be familiar to Wainwright fans. “It’s almost like a samba.” A samba march, then? “A somber samba march!” So it’s a combination of reflection and action -reflective action.”Īnd yet, as mantra-like as the song is, isn’t there a bit of tropical flavor to the rhythm? “It’s definitely kind of Brazilian, I think,” he agrees. It’s also a bit of a march, like a meditative march toward the light. But it’s also very proactive it’s not stagnant. Of “Secret Sister,” he says, “I think on one hand, it’s a meditation and a sort of reflection on the state of the world and what needs to happen, i.e., more kindness, more love. He co-produced the track with frequent collaborator Blake Mills, who plays guitar on it, with percussion from the equally renowned Matt Chamberlain. I had heard stories over the years about that whole era and that whole situation, so I felt like I had to do it.” And in fact, two of her sisters became Immaculate Heart nuns, and subsequently were thrown out of the church when the order was discontinued.

Wainwright says that the woman he considers his step-grandmother “was brought up by those nuns in the ‘60s and went to that school and was really a part of that whole scene.
#RUFUS WAINWRIGHT SONGS PLUS#
'Austin City Limits' Sets John Prine Retrospective for New Season, Plus Yola, Rufus Wainwright, the MavericksĪlthough Wainwright is well known for his songs for films over the years, “I’m not sure I’ve done an original song for a documentary, actually,” he tells Variety.
#RUFUS WAINWRIGHT SONGS SERIES#
Blige, Rufus Wainwright and Prominent Composers Join Sundance Festival's Film Music House Series Rufus Wainwright Joins Forces With DJs Fred Falke and Zen Freeman for 'Technopera' A soundtrack album featuring the two songs and Ariel Marx’s score also arrives Friday. The result is “Secret Sister,” a compelling song that evokes both spiritual mysteries and calls to concrete action, and which appears on the “Rebel Hearts” soundtrack along with another original song, Sharon Van Etten’s opening “Conjunction.” Variety has the premiere of an excerpt from Wainwright’s song (below), along with some of the historic and modern footage and animation from director Pedros Kos’ film, which opens in theaters Friday and bows on Discovery Plus two days later. It was intergenerationally personal for him, as he was already intimately familiar with the subject matter, thanks to his grandfather’s girlfriend having been part of the order of nuns that got in trouble with the Catholic church in the 1960s, and having heard her story over the years. When Rufus Wainwright was asked to write a closing theme song for “Rebel Hearts,” a documentary about a renegade order of socially activist nuns that opens this weekend, he didn’t require the preamble that virtually any other singer-songwriter would have.
