themed week // Rufus Wainwright + Sharon Van Etten, Baby,It's Cold Outside

Rufus Wainwright is a Canadian-American singer, who's career started in 1993.
So far he has released seven studio albums: Rufus Wainwright (1998), Poses (2001), Want One (2003), Want Two (2004), Release the Stars (2007), All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010) and the most recent, Out of the Game (2012), besides his two live albums, two compilations and three EPs.
More information about this talented musician, check here.

Baby, It's Cold Outside was written and composed by Frank Loesser with the intention to be a Christmas song - this idea was lost during the past few years.
Frank Loesser wrote this duet and sang it with his wife, Lynn Garland, to celebrate the opening of their hotel. 
This song was recorded by many different artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John or Cee-Lo Green and Christina Aguilera.

This version counts with Rufus Wainwright and Sharon Van Etten and it was recorded like this one, to a special compilation named Holidays Rule, released this year. 

"I simply must go - But baby, it's cold outside
The answer is no - But baby, it's cold outside
This welcome has been - How lucky that you dropped in
So nice and warm - Look out the window at that storm"

Rufus Wainwright, Going To A Town

Rufus Wainwright is a Canadian-American singer known for songs like Across The Universe or Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, who's career started in 1993.

He is brother of the Folk Pop singer Martha Wainwright.

Wainwright is also known for his tenor singing voice, some of his songs can be described as popera (pop opera) or baroque pop due to the big influences of operas and symphony orchestras.

With 6 studio albums - Rufus Wainwright (1998), Poses (2001), Want One (2003), Want Two (2004), Release The Stars (2007) and All Nights Are Nights: Songs For Lulu (2010), besides two live albums, two compilations and 3 EPs.

Going To A Town is the first single taken from Release The Stars.
About the song, Wainwright once revealed:
"The meaning is very plain, mainly that I'm having problems with the United States at the moment, as we all are. We all love America, I think everybody does in a certain way. But we have to admit that there's just been too many mistakes made in the recent past over too many issues, and we've just got to deal with that fact."
Once he admitted Going To A Town "is more about birth than destruction".

The video was directed by Sophia Muller and features Wainwright on the role of who's thought to be based on D.H. Lawrence, and three women that according to the singer represent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the other Frida Kahlo and the other one is more abstract more like "fairy tale-like" from Mozart's The Magic Flute. Later he said those three women represent The Three Graces, with the burning roses symbolizing "purification by fire" representing the United States "beautiful, but thorny".

"I may just never see you again or might as well

You took advantage of a world that loved you well

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down

I'm so tired of you America"