Want One

Want One was the first part of what was meant to be a double album called Want. Marius de Vries produced, Andy Bradfield mixed, and Lenny Waronker was executive in charge of production. Wainwright and de Vries share the orchestral arrangements with Chris Elliott and Maxim Moston, and the credits run from Levon Helm on drums to the London Oratory Choir. Martha Wainwright, Joan Wasser, Teddy Thompson and Linda Thompson sing on it, and Kate McGarrigle plays banjo on 14th Street.

A Guardian profile published just after release said the sleeve thanked everyone from Leonard Cohen to Beth Orton, via David Bowie, Elton John and both Pet Shop Boys, and that the cover shows Wainwright as a knight lost in a dark wood. Oh What a World takes its name from The Wizard of Oz, and I Don't Know What It Is borrows from the Three's Company theme and from Judy Garland's The Harvey Girls.

The singles were I Don't Know What It Is, which reached 74 in the UK, and Oh What a World. The album reached 60 on the Billboard 200, 130 in France and 77 in the Netherlands, and won the Outstanding Music Artist award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. It was nominated for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize.

Pitchfork scored it 6.9 and judged it a top-heavy album whose best material came in the first half hour, with Go or Go Ahead singled out as the most compelling portrait. David Fricke of Rolling Stone wrote of "breathtaking, eccentric opulence". In 2023 Wainwright said the songs of the Want era were the last gasp of more glorious days.