I was going to talk only about Elton John, but I came across this SDMB thread from 2002, when Rufus was a relatively new act:
Sir Elton John really, really sucks
(Do I see a change in Dope culture comparing this thread with today? The OP gets away with excoriating negativity. I feel like I can barely say anything these days on here of a negative nature without getting torn a new asshole, after which my head is torn off and shoved into the new asshole, after which I am told I have my head up my ass. But I digress!)
It’s a pretty apt comparison. Both are singer-songwriters, both play the piano, both are gay, etc. And both are personally meaningful to me, though I would say I’m a “fan” of neither (though an appreciator of songs by both).
In high school, a teacher held some sort of contest in class and was giving away vinyl records from his collection. I won John’s “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player.” I loved the album and would listen to it more than once in a row. Today, I am still a fan of the song “Midnight Creeper.” I think it gets inside the head of a predator pretty well, well before “profiling” and whatnot entered the popular consciousness. And it’s just a great song:
I like a handful of other EJ songs too. Mostly they are his hits.My Rufus Wainwright story goes like this. I was head over heels for someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (or something close to it–don’t try this at home), and she introduced me to the song “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.” It’s still painful to think about that song, and that was way back in 2007.
OK, so let me give my opinion on both of these artists; more specifically on the quality and quantity of their fandom today. And then we can proceed with people tearing me a new asshole, etc. Here we go:
Elton John
In a recent thread I started about the nature of Beyonce’s megastardom, a spontaneous argument arose (in which I did not participate) as to whether Elton John counts today or used to count as a megastar. That’s an interesting question, and it got me pondering. I also saw a rerun of Saturday Night Live from the early 80s in which he was the featured musical artist. The song was skillfully performed but seemed to fade into the typical “Elton John” substance out of which he makes his tunes.
Here’s the rub: How many fans does Elton John really have these days? You don’t need to ask that about, say, the band Rush: you just know they have a lot of fans. My gut tells me that he really doesn’t have a whole lot of fans, actually. Rather, most people who like him at all are like me: they dig his hits to the extent they haven’t been overplayed, and that’s about it. I don’t think there are all that many people getting into the deep cuts of his albums and really relishing the musical majesty of EJ.
I think the problem with EJ is one that affects 99% of artists and renders them equivalent to their hits: a lot of his stuff sounds kinda the same. Songwriters tend to process and reprocess the same hooks, or at least members of the same family of hooks, and EJ is not an exception. Another thing that weakens EJ in the aggregate is that his production and instrumentation are pretty heavy. You’ve got the ever-present piano, and he just loads everything and the kitchen sink on top of that. It’s Vegemite on top of Marmite on top of butter on top of jam on top of toast. With bacon. Plus, Bernie Taupin’s lyrics (which range from masterful to abysmal) tend to be pretty dense and heavy. I find EJ’s music fatiguing to the ear, on the whole. I like EJ’s vocals but find they work best for me in limited doses.
So no, I don’t think he “really, really sucks” per the 2002 post. I think he’s extremely talented, genius level even, but he falls into the trap that even most genius level singer-songwriters do. Therefore, I appreciate him, but I’m not a fan per se. And thus I don’t sense that he has a lot of true fans, people who are really into his music. Personally, I’ve never met anyone who called him/herself an EJ fan.
Rufus Wainwright
When I first heard that song back in 2007, I thought wow! This guy is just exploding with talent. I expected to hear more from him, about him. But I never did. I can see on Allmusic.com that he’s made albums rather consistently over the years, and that site tends to give him decent marks. But in my meanderings on the Web, I have heard nary a thing about him, seen virtually no recommendations for his music. In fact, I had kinda forgotten about him until I read the aforementioned 2002 post.
Thus, my preliminary conclusion is that he doesn’t have a lot of fans. Yet, I know he’s the type of indie artist that can have a small but very loyal group of fans, so I am not drawing any firm conclusions. (EJ, in contrast is too big to have that type of fan. I.e., he’s going to sell out big shows and it’s hard to tell what is nostalgia, what is appreciation for hits/fame, and what is actual true fandom.)
In any case, RW seems like an artist who never fulfilled his initial promise. It seemed, at least to me in 2007, that he was going to have a bigger influence on pop culture, on modern music, etc. If this is the case, what might be the reasons?
I think RW has some inherent limitations that are almost contradictory in nature. He’s a “brilliant” songwriter, but his stuff tends to sound quite the same to me. They are “brilliant” examples of songcraft that nevertheless do not take off for me. To get Aristotelian, they have the essence of great songs but not the accidents. They command respect but not enjoyment. Of course, there are exceptions.
I think his voice is another such limitation. He is a “great” singer, yet his voice grates on the (or at least my) nerves very quickly. In terms of both song and performance, he seems to want to turn everything up to 11, yet the end result tends to be 6ish or 7ish.
In short, he seems to have limitations similar to those of EJ, the difference being he hasn’t delivered the hits as EJ has.
Those are my thoughts! I eagerly await the two new assholes I am about to receive, one for each artist. 
