Songfacts®:

• Rufus wrote this song about his father, the singer Loudon Wainwright III, after a row they had over dinner.
  
  In 1976, when Rufus was just 3 years old, his parents split. His mother, the singer Kate McGarrigle, took Rufus and his younger sister Martha and moved them Bedford, New York to Montreal in a U-Haul van, which Rufus sings about in the line, "In the drifting white snow you left me."
• Rufus' father says he wasn't offended by this song - he was actually proud of his son as he considered it some of his best work. The two have a complicated relationship which is amplified by their profession: They write songs about each other that serve as a strange form of family therapy. In 2012, Rufus appeared on a song with Loudon called "The Days That We Die," where they seem to come to terms with each other, admitting that neither man will ever change.
• Rufus Wainwright explained to The Guardian in 2005 why he penned this blow-by-blow report of a confrontation with his father, Loudon Wainwright III. Rufus had recently released his debut album and had turned cocky, which he used as a coping mechanism to make it in the music industry. He and Loudon had done a photo shoot and interview for Rolling Stone together in Shelter Island, New York. "I told him he must be really happy that I got him back in that magazine after all these years," Rufus recalled. "That sort of kicked things off. Later in the evening he threatened to kill me. So I went home and wrote 'Dinner At Eight' as a vindictive retort to his threat."
  
  Rufus and his dad didn't speak for a long time after the incident.
• In a 2020 Songfacts interview with Wainwright, he explained how this song changed meaning for him over the years. "It was very much intended as a shot over the bow to my father," he said. "Kind of a warning, and in an aggressive mood. But the more I sing it and the older I get - and myself being a father now, too - I realize it's just a complete cry for love, and for coming together and coming to terms with the world. So, that song kind of went from an aggressive song to a very sensitive and loving song."
• Rufus' mother, Kate McGarrigle, played the accordion on this song.