Wainwright's most commercially successful album to date, Release the Stars charted in 13 countries, reaching Top 10 positions in Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom, and was certified gold in Canada and the UK.

Wainwright planned to create a more simple piano and voice album originally, but began leaning towards more lush sounds once the recording process started.

"[4] Wainwright cited two reasons for the change in direction and the heightened dramatic flare: the cancer diagnosis received by his mother (folk musician Kate McGarrigle) during the album's genesis, which he found "fueled his creative intensity in some kind of displaced attempt to get her well", and the New York Metropolitan Opera's commissioning Wainwright to write an opera, making Release the Stars a way of training for such a large project.

"[6] For his "incredible take on what popular music means in today's world", Wainwright recruited Neil Tennant to advise him, act as executive producer of the album, and assist with the editing process.

Petro Papahadjopoulos directed the music video for "Rules and Regulations", which features a group of men performing a choreographed dance around a long john-wearing Wainwright inside a London mansion.

[18] "Going to a Town", the album's lead single, was considered by Uncut's John Mulvey to be among the angriest lyrics Wainwright has written, an "indictment of the country of his birth that hinges on the refrain, 'I'm so tired of you America'".

[18] The political track, which Wainwright claimed he wrote in just five minutes on the eve of his departure for Berlin, confronts the Bush administration's perceived damage to the U.S. in the form of a love song.

[7] Citing Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mahler as influences, Wainwright stated the string arrangements were his first attempt at writing chamber music.

[23] "Between My Legs", which Wainwright wrote about a "boy [he] was infatuated with named Tommy Hotpants", is a "fantasy about being able to save your object of desire when the apocalypse comes, and bring him to some sort of hidden paradise.

In an April 2007 interview with Scotland on Sunday, Wainwright revealed the inspiration for both "Do I Disappoint You" and "Leaving for Paris N° 2": [They were] actually written for a musical that I was thinking of writing.

The song's lyrical inspiration comes from Lorca Cohen, Leonard's daughter, "missing the New York show" (referring to one of the Judy Garland tribute concerts Wainwright performed in June 2006 at Carnegie Hall).

[30] Throughout much of the tour, fans could audition to join Wainwright on stage and perform their own rendition of Siân Phillips' spoken word part in "Between My Legs".

In his review for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote that Release the Stars "is, by anyone's standards, a wonderful album, packed with stunning melodies and brilliant lyrics.

"[37] Billboard magazine's Susan Visakowitz described the album as Wainwright's "most unabashedly flamboyant record yet", with "larger-than-life melodies wrapped in swelling strings and surging horns and buoyed by the singer's typical swoon-inducing, caramel-covered tenor.

[39] Music journalist Robert Christgau complimented the album, observing: "To prove he can, [Wainwright] sets just one of this career-topping aggregation of florid melodies to electric guitars, and damn my heterosexual ears for liking it best.

"[42] Referring to "Sanssouci", the former summer palace of Frederick the Great and inspiration for the song of the same name, Uncut contributor John Mulvey wrote, "If he keeps making albums as good as this, we should wall him up in there forever.

Regarding his attempt at creating radio-friendly music, Petridis claimed that Wainwright "doesn't seem to be trying at all" by employing Neil Tennant (a musician also known for grandiloquence) as executive producer of the album and including extravagant orchestrations.

He noted the exotic instruments used in "Do I Disappoint You": "It's a marvelous song, but it's lavishly decorated with thundering timpani, fluttering woodwind, pizzicato strings and brass."

"[38] Entertainment Weekly's Gregory Kirschling stated that Release the Stars was "adorned with more strings, horns, choirs, and piccolo flute (!)

[68][69] At the same ceremony, Wainwright was presented with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, an honor given to an openly gay member of the entertainment or media community for his or her work toward eliminating homophobia.