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Jun 09, 2020 By Julian Roberts-Grmela Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright is releasing a new album, Unfollow the Rules, on July 10 via BMG. Now he has shared another new song from it, “You Ain’t Big,” via an accompanying lyric video. Watch it below.

Wainwright says in a press release that “You Ain’t Big” was initially written about “the strange fact” that “if you couldn’t make it in the heartland of the U.S. you weren’t really considered a true star [in the music business].” But, Wainwright says that the term “You Ain’t Big” has taken on additional meanings “during this tremendously turbulent time nationwide.”

“The song at heart is apolitical,” he says. “Its vintage sound harkens back to the classical American country music sound of the ’40s and ’50s and with the help of opposing images in the video of how different life was for white people compared to black people in the 1950’s, as it has sadly remained, I think it rings appropriate for this time and professes a certain truth.”

Unfollow the Rules was due out April 24 via BMG, but was delayed to July 10 because of the pandemic.

Wainwright said in a recent Under the Radar interview that a “theory” in Unfollow the Rules was his return to California, where he made his early albums and was signed by a major label.

“My husband and I have a daughter who lives [in California] who we share custody with her mother,” he said. “So, we came [to California] really to be with her but it also coincided with the 20th anniversary of my first album coming out and just this idea of revisiting a lot of the rooms and the musical legends that I had an opportunity to work with. So, we just set [Unfollow the Rules] up in that way. And thankfully because I had been away for a long time in opera land, I had written a ton of songs over the last 10 years. I just had so much material and then I was able to give that to Mitchell Froom, the great producer, who then chose the repertoire and we just made the record.”

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