I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill

Rufus Wainwright celebrates one of his musical heroes on his 2025 tribute album, Im a Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill. A long-avowed aficionado of Kurt Weill, Wainwright joins forces here with L.A.s Pacific Jazz Orchestra for a live concert highlighting some of the legendary German-born American composers best-loved songs. Recognized for his works like 1928s Threepenny Opera with playwright Bertolt Brecht, Weill was an influential artist whose music fused American jazz, German cabaret, and popular song into his own distinctive, often satirical sound. Wainwright is particularly suited for Weills songs, which much like his own work, straddle the line between theatrical stage music and wry pop. Hes also only grown more assured as a performer and truly owns the stage here against the lushly arranged, cinematically widescreen sound of the Pacific Jazz Orchestra. The more romantic, melancholy songs work especially well, including the opening "September Song," "It Never Was You," and "Will You Remember Me?," all three of which are culled from the 1938 musical Knickerbocker Holiday. Yet more unexpected are the more uptempo songs like "Matrosen Song," from 1929s Happy End, which finds Wainwright bursting through the frenetic and shifting tango rhythms. He also shines on the foreign-language numbers like "Furchte Dich Nicht" (also from Happy End) and the 1934 cabaret ballad "Je ne t’aime pas," his voice a tremulous quaver of heartache and regret. We also get rousing renditions of the Threepenny Opera classics "Mack the Knife," "The Saga of Jenny," and "Zuhālterballade," the latter of which finds singer Viola Odette Harlow playing the noble Jenny to Wainwrights charmingly ruthless Macheath. With Im a Stranger Here Myself, Wainwright doesnt just do Weill justice, he does so with a passion and elan all his own. ~ Matt Collar