THE FIGAROSCOPE. – You celebrate at this time your twenty-year career on the road.

Rufus WAINWRIGHT. – I have finished a new album with Mitchell Froom, I am very happy. It will come out in a year. This tour is a good way to remind the public that I work in popular music, and preparing me for new adventures. Here I am a working musician and middle-aged! We recorded at Sound City, and also in Mitchell, in Los Angeles. I consider this drive as the result of my first album, I find there Jim Keltner, for example. I would like to borrow a new musical direction then, surely by making an album in French.

At the beginning of your career, you play as a figure of author-composer of the new generation.

The artists of my generation that have lasted as Sujan Stevens or Anhoni no longer seem to truly pursue this path. I am still hooked to these methods are old school, which my parents were part, alongside Dylan, James Taylor or Joni Mitchell. One of the biggest problems of the current music, are the lyrics. Person is no longer as much attention to the words of our days. I still consider that the most difficult part in a song it is the writing of texts. A good song, it is the marriage of melody and words. I don’t know what to think of the young people. I expect them to write good songs.

The celebrity I would have certainly killed him. I have not experienced the success public, but I had huge support from big names of the music

Rufus Wainwright

What condition your state of mind at the beginning of your career?

I was very naive and I believed everything that you told me. I had predicted that I would become a huge star and that I could not move me. I really thought, I was led to sign horrible contracts. In retrospect, I have tenderness for this naiveté, it has kept me from being too affected by the events. I quickly realized that my path would be different, and I adapted. The celebrity I would have certainly killed him. I have not experienced the success public, but I had huge support from big names in music, like Michael Stipe or Burt Bacharach. Somehow, it was even more impressive to me.

The criticism has supported you from the beginning.

I have always been supported in the mid-pop. I even managed to convince some people over the years. The magazine Vice I hated at the beginning. But when I pulled out Songs for Lulu , they rallied. In the middle classic, it is a different matter. But eventually they will get me to worship, I’m sure.

Tell us about this tour.

We have traveled throughout the United States and Australia. After Europe, I’ll finish up in Montreal. The first part of the concert is devoted to my first album, with one or two new songs. Then in a second part, I play Poses from the beginning to the end, without interrupting.

Rufus Wainwright at the Olympia , 28, bd des Capucines (Ier). Tel.: 0 892 68 33 68. Date: April 5, at 20h. Seats: from 40 to 95€.