“Music That Matters” is a series of posts highlighting music with special significance in my life that has stuck with me, and has become a foundation for my appreciation of music as a whole. Here I will be discussing the legendary and prolific indie singer/songwriter, Sufjan Stevens.
At this point, Sufjan Stevens requires hardly any introduction. Many may recognize his 2005 hit “Chicago”, or more recently, his original contribution to 2017’s Call Me By Your Name soundtrack, “Mystery Of Love”. Those familiar with any of his tracks are unlikely to forget his unique sound, be it his one-of-a-kind soft singing style, or his storied lyrics of people, places, and the space between them. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Sufjan has been releasing music since 1999, becoming an emblematic singer-songwriter voice of the 2000’s and 2010’s. Always evolving and growing, Sufjan’s music has spanned a wide array of themes, tones, and genres, including folk, rock, pop, electronica, ambient, and even hip-hop. One of Sufjan’s most admirable qualities is his uninhibited desire for exploration in music; while not always yielding the most stellar results, his confidence to step into any new project has always made him one of the most interesting musicians to follow. In addition to his main eight solo studio albums, Sufjan has, uniquely, produced a ballet score, two 50-song Christmas albums, an orchestral composition dedicated to a New York highway, and collaborated with various artists (and his stepdad) to explore everything from movies to the cosmos.
From a personal perspective, Sufjan’s music has always served to push the limits of my own musical taste. With his ever-expanding repertoire of genres and aesthetics, Sufjan was the artist that I grew to deeply appreciate, and who challenged me to reevaluate my preconceptions of genres that didn’t appeal to me at the time. Be it nudging me into electronic music with the fluttering synthesizers of 2010’s The Age of Adz, or even giving me a taste of hip-hop with his side project “Sisyphus”. The thing about Sufjan that made him such a powerful force in expanding my musical landscape, is that no matter what style he adopted he always maintained a sound that was entirely his own. Behind a full band of brass and woodwinds, behind keyboards and auto-tune, behind a banjo and guitar, Sufjan has always been firmly at the center, making music that only he could be responsible for.
With each iteration of Sufjan’s sound comes a new array of instruments that fill his music. Although he brings in plenty of musicians into the recording studio, Sufjan is credited with playing an enormous repertoire of instruments. Guitar, banjo, and piano are his signature tools, but he has played various woodwinds, drums, synthesizers, and every plucked string instrument under the sun, including the little known guitalin. In addition to all of this, Sufjan is credited for writing and producing all of his solo albums. This is no small feat, especially considering the density of some of his most acclaimed work. Sufjan’s sense of musical wonder inspired me to begin playing music more regularly again. Three months after the release of 2015’s beautiful Carrie & Lowell, I would have learned every song in the track list on guitar, having riffs that I still constantly play. He showed me the banjo is a beautiful and versatile instrument, and would be the eventual reason for getting my very own. And he would become the sole reason I can (mediocrely) play any music on the piano. For a generation of musicians and music listeners, Sufjan has surely served as a major inspiration, as he has for me.
Perhaps above all things, Sufjan has cemented himself as one of the great lyricists of his time. His music was one of the first instances where I started paying very close attention to the words being sung and giving them dedicated focus. What you quickly pick up on from listening to his music is that Sufjan’s ability to paint a picture in time, a setting and characters that feel as though you’ve seen or know, is one of his central strengths. In many cases, Sufjan draws on characters from history and culture, looking at them from a new perspective. Such is the case on tracks like “John Wayne Gacy Jr.”, a short depiction of the infamous serial killer clown, opening with the words “His father was a drinker, and his mother cried in bed”. From the outset, there is an empathy requested for someone most would deem unworthy of it. Yet Sufjan draws a direct comparison to himself, asking if the evil within John Wayne Gacy can be found within any of us, ending the song with “I am really just like him”.
Interesting uses of noteworthy people and places are a classic feature of Sufjan’s songwriting, but his most rewarding lyrics are often those of a deeply personal nature. His ability to unpack complicated emotions and situations with small vignettes of his life, beautiful imagery, and unabashed earnestness, is remarkably effective. Nowhere is this more apparent than on his devastating and gorgeous masterpiece Carrie & Lowell, an album that deals entirely with the recent passing of Sufjan’s mother, Carrie, and the hurricane of grief and confusion that stemmed from their complex and often fraught relationship. Throughout the album, Sufjan details critical moments in his life with his mother, getting left behind at the video store, Summer trips to Eugene, Oregon, visits to the hospital to see her. In particular, the heartbreak of Carrie’s death is best represented by “Fourth Of July”, a song that could bring even the most stoic to tears. In this track, Sufjan imagines a conversation with his mother at the time of her death, with him trying to make sense of it all, asking “what could I have said to raise you from the dead?” The absurdity of death falls upon him as he thinks back to the hospital asking him about the logistics of her body, saying “such a funny thought to wrap you up in cloth”. All the while in his imagined conversation, his mother responds to him as though he were a child, using pet names which he responds with in turn. After each instance of “my little hawk”, “my little dove”, “my dragonfly”, the simple yet powerful feeling of wanting your mom hits hard. In moments like this, even for those of us lucky to not have lived such tragedy, Sufjan makes his experience feel close.
Typically, Sufjan does not settle for just writing phenomenal lyrics, but has proven time and time again that his compositional skills are there to meet the occasion as well. While all of his albums tend to be quite different from one another, there is typically at least one song where Sufjan flexes his skills for dynamic, layered songwriting. A song with twists and turns, with the promise of discovery right around each verse and chorus. This could be the titular “Come On Feel The Illinoise!” from 2005’s Illinois, the closing “America” from 2020’s The Ascension, or even “Christmas Unicorn”, the crowning jewel of Sufjan’s Christmas music found on 2012’s Silver & Gold, and one of my personal favorites. But really, no song in his catalogue can compare to one of my favorite tracks of all time, the sprawling, 25-minute opus that is “Impossible Soul”, the closer to 2010’s The Age of Adz. Frankly, it feels odd to call this a track, not just due to its length, but also that it has five distinct sections that flow from one to the next, almost like an album within itself. Writing about The Age of Adz, Ryan Dombal said of the song: “That single track bulges with more engaging ideas than most artists could muster in a career, and there’s no one else on earth that could’ve come up with it.” I wholeheartedly agree; for all of its scope and fluidity, it bleeds Sufjan all the way through. From the quiet opening of keyboard chords, to the blaring horns, the buzzing and beeping synthesizers, the auto-tuned vocals, the call and response chorus, all the way to the acoustic finish, “Impossible Soul” is definitively the work of one particular artist.
So many ideas are explored lyrically in “Impossible Soul”. I couldn’t claim to have an understanding of what Sufjan’s lyrical intentions are for most of the track, but I hardly care. On the back end of the track, the phrase “we can do so much more together, it’s not so impossible” is sung over and over again, and my need to analyze his words fades away, replaced by a shapeless inspiration. For one of the greatest lyricists of his time, Sufjan manages to transcend meaning in this moment. The truth is I couldn’t explain exactly why this track has this effect on me, but the feeling is undeniable. Like his musical journey and impact over the last two decades, there is a certain mystery to Sufjan that has captured countless listeners.
In 2016, I heard Sufjan play “Impossible Soul” live in its entirety, what is possibly my favorite concert memory. Leaving the show, I remember glowing with happiness, and without much more thought to it, letting the mantra echo in my head: it’s not so impossible.
Listening Now 