Martha Wainwright sings and dances through the rain
“I Know Your Married But I Have Feelings Too”
Release date: 6.10.2008
By Jerilyn Covert
Take it from the man who’s been lauded by critics as the ultimate storyteller: “The story of who you are is never about you,” Rabih Alameddine writes in his new book “Hakawati.” Of this, Martha Wainwright is probably well aware. Daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle and the sister of Rufus, Martha is definitely a person whose story has never been about her, but about her nepotistic relationships with members of her legendary family. As if accounting for this fact, Martha chose to focus her new album, “I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too,” outward, on the people in her life and the events happening all around her, unlike her more introspective eponymous debut. Throughout the album’s 14 tracks, she reflects on past friendships, on casualties of war, on her mother’s battle with cancer and on seemingly scads of former flames (let’s not forget the title, after all). Lines like this from “Comin’ Tonight,” however, take that outward focus to the brink of obsession: “I spend my time trying to forget you with/ Booze and smoke from cigarettes and dope/ I only seem to forget myself/ It’s only you that is left.” Martha was only 1 year old when her parents split up and her mother packed their bags for Canada. Growing up, she was a self-described “lazy student” who showed an interest in song and dance performances. But unlike her older brother, she did not have ambitions to be a star–at least not for a while. “I did initially rebel against joining the ‘family business,’ but I think it just came from a fear that I wouldn’t be good enough,” she told an interviewer for musicOMH.com. In another interview with Rolling Stone, she says, “The bar is really, really f**king high.” Yeah, no kidding. With folk legends for parents and a brother whom Elton John has called “the best songwriter on the planet,” it’s no wonder Martha feels the pressure to be great. A lesser artist might have succumbed under that kind of burden, but Martha Wainwright was determined to overcome it.
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