All Things Go. All Things Go.

Counting down Sufjan Stevens' five best songs.

Oct 05, 2023

Sufjan Stevens - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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“My imagination can be a problem,” Sufjan Stevens once said.

“I'm prone to making my life, my family, and the world around me complicit in my cosmic fable, and often it's not fair to manipulate the hard facts of life into a vision quest,” he went on in this 2015 Pitchfork interview. “But it's all an attempt to extract meaning, and ultimately that's what I'm in pursuit of, like: What's the significance of these experiences?”

I was 18 when Illinois came out, living in Chicago and wrestling with my own place in the cosmic fable of the universe. A team of scientists could not have custom designed a singer/songwriter more finely attuned to my vibes at the time. Here was a guy singing about love and death and time and God in the only way that made a lick of sense to me at the time: an overview of American history laced with his own personal history and bundled under insufferably twee song titles. He emerged in the era of precocious singer/songwriters who sang with twiggy voices that sounded like they would have a panic attack over trying to decide which potato chip to eat first, but he was never really of it. His lyrical and sonic ambitions exceeded many of his early contemporaries and sometimes even his own grasp, although it was usually thrilling to watch him try.

In a Sufjan Stevens song, everything is connected. There are no coincidences. It mattered that a childhood friend passed away on a state holiday devoted to a Polish Civil War general. It mattered that a stepmother he grew up resenting used to take him to the same town where Abraham Lincoln once lived. Oregon’s Tillamook forest spent much of the 1900s getting ravaged by a series of wildfires, and this changed the whole course of history, up to and including Sufjan’s final day with his mother.

This is a very grounding thing to consider in the chaos of your late teens: There are no loose ends in all creation. The thread of your life is part of a grander design that includes all the other threads. I suppose it’s not hard to see how this way of thinking could collapse into a black hole of self-absorption. But for Sufjan, it’s an exercise in humility. He’s not the protagonist of the universe. He’s just one member of the band, and we’re all playing on the deck of the Titanic here. “God gave me a pen and a pad of parchment paper,” he wrote in a series of essays for the upcoming Javelin. “‘Transcribe your feelings and your findings,’ she said. ‘Do your thing. First thought, best thought.’ I did as I was commanded, a dutiful sea urchin inching its way to the possibility of words and wisdom.”

I knew I wanted to write about Sufjan Stevens ahead of the release of Javelin, but didn’t fully trust myself to do a good job of it. I’m too close to his music to trust my thoughts. I don’t know that I could ever definitively pick a favorite artist, but Sufjan is — and I say this without hesitation — the most important artist of my life, the one who has done the most to shape how I see the world. It’s not just his music either — it’s the memories associated with them, the friends, the roadtrips, the kisses, the Christmases, the tears. It’s too much. I needed some help. So I called in some of my favorite writers, music snobs and artists to round the piece out.

The rule was simple: Your five favorite Sufjan songs and why. (I stole this idea from Luke O’Neil, and you should subscribe to his very good Welcome to Hellworld Substack.) As you’ll see, more than one person on here didn’t bother following the rules, but that’s artists for you. Editing these folks’ work has been a pure joy. I’m so grateful for everyone’s contributions.

I started putting this together before Stevens announced that he’d been diagnosed with Guillian-Barre Syndrome. I’m glad he’s still with us, and I’m also glad his music has taught me to anticipate moments like this. He’s a keen observer of the transient nature of things, and the fragility of the status quo. “Apparitions got awry, they surround me, all sides,” he howls on “I Want to Be Well.” “From what I am seeing, only changes.” Or, as he put it more succinctly elsewhere: “All things go.” And so they do. But until then, let’s be thankful for the time we’ve got. Let’s be thankful for the people in our lives. We have a lot to give one another.

Here’s a master list of every song from the picks. Come on! Listen to to the Sufjams!

Lindsay Fickas

Lindsay Fickas is a freelance writer who lives just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. When she’s not forcing her husband and three kids to listen to her favorite songs on repeat, she’s rewatching Succession, feeling intimidated in the gym, or cooking needlessly laborious meals. You can find her over on Medium as well as at Bluesky where she posts through her existential dread.

Like most 2000s Christian kids, my first exposure to Sufjan Stevens came from someone in my youth group. The woman who put him on my radar had acted as my mentor, advising me on everything from my prayer life to my musical tastes. As I sat in her living room, the banjos strummed and his soft vocals sounded. I put on a smile and nodded, but the enjoyment was feigned. All I could think about was the fact that this woman I adored so deeply didn’t know me at all.

At that point, I was deep in my Tooth & Nail phase. I spent the weekends in corners of clubs pretending I was not afraid of the evangelicals in the mosh pits. My eyeliner was bad, my hair was worse, and I wore checkered Vans in hopes that they could forge an identity for me. Whenever Sufjan would come up in conversation, I would happily say, “I tried, but he was just, like, way too mellow.”

It was the younger sister of the youth group mentor who convinced me to try him out again. This time, we were heading back from a leadership retreat out in the middle of rural Missouri. By now, I had stopped trying to center my personality on listening to bands I thought would make guys like me. Maybe it was the magic of the long drive or maybe it was the shedding of my try-hard skin, but suddenly, Sufjan’s music struck me in a brand new way. Following that trip, I went to Slackers, bought every Sufjan CD I could find, and played them on a steady rotation.

Over the next fifteen years, this man would shape me. He was the constant as I changed my style, changed my loves, changed my aspirations, and changed my religion. His music has been so pivotal to my life that it feels nearly impossible to whittle it down to just a few favorites. Before I can change my mind yet again, here are my five essential Sufjan songs:

1. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out To Get Us! Ahhhh!”

In the summer of 2008, I briefly dated a guy who lived out in the middle of Southern Illinois. Every other Friday, I would leave work and begin making the two-hour drive to his house. While the relationship barely lasted a season, the albums I listened to on those rides remain some of my favorites. Appropriately enough, Illinois became my go-to. The fanfare brightened the passing towns, and the folk instruments made the endless cornfields feel nearly poetic.

While the album should have lasted less than the car ride, I never reached the ending songs. Instead, I would replay “The Predatory Wasp” over and over. It was a song that continued to feel brand new no matter how many times I pressed repeat.

The peaceful wistfulness of the beginning quickly gives way to a bombastic orchestra that feels as though it can barely keep up with his train of thought. The song oscillates between these two extremes, never quite settling one way or another. The instrumentation is one of the most apt examples of early queer love. It’s full of constant questions and misunderstandings. The choir crying “we were in love” battles against the acceptance of “he was my best friend.” In the end, there’s never closure. The last note resonates until it’s abruptly cut off to move to the next track.

2. “City of Roses”

It’s my true belief that the only proper way to listen to “City of Roses” is to listen to it twice. At less than two-and-a-half minutes, it’s one of his shorter lyrical works. Despite the brevity, it still manages to capture everything I’ve come to love about Sufjan.

It’s a can-do anthem mixed with a healthy dose of weariness. He doesn’t take the time to indulge with his normal instrumentation, and the brief notes you do get are bare and repetitive. You never get the chance to dwell.

3. “Sugar”

2020 was an odd time for new music. While there were undoubtedly a lot of great albums released that year, most traditional marketing and touring was put on pause. And though I don’t think The Ascension would have ever been recognized on the same level as other fan favorites, I do believe the pandemic hampered the release quite a bit.

The album feels like the oddball little sister of Age of Adz. The electronics are more contained, the introspection feels nearly tortuous, and the lyrics move from thoughtful to downright odd before you can fully process them. Personally, I love every last minute, particularly the single, “Sugar.”

The song is sprawling, opening with several minutes of angsty instrumentals that build until his voice cuts through. The vocals are controlled but just barely. He’s impatient and hungry, and he’s going to let you know it.

The Ascension contains some of my favorite Sufjan lyrics, and honestly, there are much stronger showings than this song (both “Tell Me You Love Me” and the title track can attest to this). But whenever I revisit the album, this is the song I anticipate the most. It’s him trying to find just the smallest bit of pleasure amidst his rawness and vulnerability, and honestly, the man deserves to have it.

4. “Fourth of July - Live”

The original recording of “Fourth of July” is one of Sufjan’s best known songs. The repetition of the line, “we’re all gonna die” is so brutal, it’s become somewhat of a meme amongst his fans. Over the course of the song, he imagines having a conversation with his newly-deceased mom. It’s not just him coming to grips with her death; it’s trying to imagine her saying everything he desperately needed to hear throughout his life.

While the song is painful enough on its own, the live version transforms it into an other-worldly experience. Rather than whisper “we’re all gonna die”, this version turns the outro into a build. The line is repeated again and again while the drums drive it home. Our mortality is less of a fact and more of an anxious struggle as the word “die” is looped over and over. Finally, after the song reaches its climax, he simply states “but I’m still alive” with an air of thick exhaustion. That small line, thrown out in the middle of a performance that deals with grief and suicidal ideation, expose you to yet another level of his depression.

I was lucky enough to catch the Carrie and Lowell tour in 2015. That was the first time I felt brave enough to step out without my baby. As I sat there in the audience battling postpartum emotions, he broke down on stage over the mother he never got to have. After I got home that night, I stood in my son’s room for a while and cried next to his crib. Now, every time parenthood feels a bit too hard, I think back to that moment and use the lump in my throat as motivation to hang on another day.

5. “I Want to be Well”

In 2010, no one knew what they were about to experience when they spun Age of Adz for the first time. It was an era where banjos were having a renaissance thanks to mainstream bands such as Mumford and Sons. And while people had come to think of Sufjan as the modern king of folk, he was about to forsake it all in favor of an album that relied heavily on synths and autotune.

For many reasons, the album would prove to be divisive amongst his fans, especially the youth group kids. We had fallen in love with the spiritually curious singer and could easily throw him on during the annual Christmas party. He was the one thing that kept us from feeling too fringe. This was all about to change as we reached the bridge in the second-to-last track where he loudly sang “I’m not fucking around.” In what I’m sure was a common experience, I reached for the liner notes thinking, surely I misheard that. And as he repeated it 15 more times, I realized I had, in fact, heard it exactly right.

A lot of my friends didn’t quite know how to handle it. Do you skip the song? Throw out the album? Give up on him completely? For a while, I tried the first option, but there was just something that kept me coming back. I chalked it up to the poppy beats, but eventually, I realized it was the bridge itself. I treated it as a guilty pleasure before realizing that no, it was just a stunningly good song.

Sufjan later explained he went through a debilitating illness during the recording of the album. The song was inspired both by himself and by battles with schizophrenia experienced by the man who provided the album artwork. Throughout the song, Sufjan once again comes face-to-face with his own mortality. He struggles as he works through whether he’s done enough in life and questions why he must suffer. The build up to the bridge is one of the most fascinating moments in his entire discography. As he repeats the song’s title again and again, his voice grows frail, fading into the instrumentation entirely at points. As he comes back, it sounds like he’s nearly shouting to stay in range of his own song. He grows angrier and angrier until he releases into the gloriously explicit bridge with a choir behind him repeating “I want to be well.” The electronics reach a crescendo as he repeats “I’m not fucking around” again and again.

While it felt like a departure from his faith for many Christians I knew, I’ve come to view it as one of his best on the topic. It’s the feeling of honest desperation as you cry to a god you’re frankly not sure exists.

One of the things I’ve found interesting in my own deconstruction was witnessing how this song predicted who would stay within evangelicalism. The people I knew who wrote him off following the release remain within the same churches and have cut out anyone who dared to leave. The people who kept revisiting the track have grown jaded toward the systems that raised them. If they’re still within the faith, they’ve joined with progressive organizations and have been outspoken about the dangers of American evangelicalism. I’ve come to view the song as a kind of litmus test. It separated the superfans from the casual Christian listeners.

The song has recently experienced a renewed sense of relevance following Sufjan’s diagnosis of Guillain-Barre Syndrome. He’s gone from being a notoriously private person to posting pictures of his pee online. And with each new Tumblr update, I can’t help but feel it’s miraculous that he’s still here. We’ve nearly lost this artist so many times, and each album feels as though it’s accompanied by tragedy. “I Want to be Well” is a song of brokenness from a man who has experienced the worst parts of life just to follow it up with a 25-minute-long song proclaiming that life “couldn’t get much better.” More than his constant experimentation, this buoyancy is what I adore most about his music. You can find sad songs from nearly any artist. Sufjan remains so exceptional to me because he softens each shard of pain with hope a man like him has no right to have.

Mason Mennenga

Mason Mennenga (he/him/his) is an aspiring theologian, podcaster, and YouTuber.

1. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”

This was the first song I recall ever listening to by Sufjan and it has remained a favorite ever since. Its haunting melodies accompanied by its even more haunting ending lyrics, “And in my best behavior / I am really just like him,” which underlines the frailty of being human. The difference between a cherub like Sufjan Stevens and a serial killer is not as much as it may seem.

2. “John My Beloved - iPhone Demo”

Carrie & Lowell was the first Sufjan album with which I fell in love. And the iPhone version of “John My Beloved” highlights his talent. Not too many people can make an iPhone recording sound beautiful but Sufjan is not like too many people.

3. “Casimir Pulaski Day”

Sufjan is often not marketed as a Christian artist but “Casimir Pulaski Day” reveals the depth of the devoutness of his Christian faith that most contemporary Christian music wished it could. Sufjan shows the possibility of making Christian music that is neither dishonest about the reality of faith nor a marketing ploy to appease the masses.

4. “Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)”

One of the most beautiful elements of Sufjan’s Michigan and Illinois albums is his ability to enter into the stories of others and tell them honestly, with all their complexities. “Flint” is perhaps the ultimate expression of telling the story of apathy of someone living in the demise of the once bustling city of Flint, Michigan.

5. “O Come O Come Emmanuel”

When one of your favorite musicians covers one of your favorite Christmas songs, it is inevitable to be one of your favorite songs. It’s both nostalgic and new.

Liz Riggs

Liz Riggs’ writing has appeared at MTV, American Songwriter and Bon Appétit. She is also my wife. Her debut novel LO-FI will release July of 2024 from Riverhead Books.

I’ll admit I was never a HUGE Sufjan fan—in the sense that I didn’t learn every word to every song of every album (my loose definition of “huge fan.”) Still, the songs of his that hit me hit me hard. They hold key places in my memory and even as he releases new music, something about his music will always feel nostalgic to me.

5. “John Wayne Gacey Jr.”

I don’t know what to say. Junior or senior year of college, this one sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was the delicate fingerpicking, the lullaby melody so antithetical to the horrifying words, but I couldn’t stop listening. I’d learn the chords on my guitar, but only play it in private—I didn’t even want to sing the lyrics aloud. I will always picture the apartment I lived in that year —one of those bland, new-build student housing apartments, the most memorable characteristic being that it was new.

4. “Chicago”

Cliché, whatever. But I drove to Chicago so many times in my late teens, early twenties as a Midwestener, always coming from 65 South —either Cincinnati, Oxford, OH, or later, Nashville. I always turned on this song as we crossed the bridge, as the depressing crumble of Gary starts to fade away and the outline of the city starts to come into focus. There is no better anthem for my favorite American city.

3. “Come Thou Fount”

One of the only old hymns that I ever wanted to sing in church. I listened to this on repeat when I was nineteen, trying to figure out how I felt about god. Even on days I didn’t know, this song was some kind of existential salve.

2. “For the Widows in Paradise, For The Fatherless in Ypsilanti”

Is it because the song was in The OC? During the (very weak) Season 4, at the funeral for Johnny, a character who wasn’t wholly necessary but whom I loved? It’s really hard to say, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the song.

1. “Death With Dignity”

Maybe this song is a favorite because it’s one of Tyler’s favorites, because it makes me want to cry even though I still don’t know all the lyrics. I’m not sure how he does that to me—crafting a melody that can make you ache before you even know all the words. But this song will always make me think of Tyler, sitting in our living room, a soup simmering on the stove, the grumpy dog at our feet.

Kevin T. Porter

Kevin T. Porter hosts Good Christian Fun, a podcast about Christian pop culture you can find everywhere you get your podcasts. He’s also on Letterboxd and Instagram @kevintporter if you’re into that sort of thing!

Sufjan Stevens occupies a place in my history transcending musical importance, likely shared by fellow post-evangelical refugees. For those looking, he provided a gentle offramp from American renditions of faith to somewhere darker, less certain, more mysterious, and probably gayer. So much of identity in formative years is hunting role models, not so you can be them but so you can feel emboldened by the same permission they did to be whoever they became. Sufjan was permission personified for scared soft boys like me and I have endless gratitude for that.

5. “All of Me Wants All of You”

This is far and away Sufjan’s most intimate song about jacking off.

4. “To Be Alone With You”

There’s no song in his catalog that better epitomizes the trembling intimacy Sufjan does best. Only he could write a song in which (The One) sounds downright painful, but worth it. Shout out to Frank Watkinson’s cover on YouTube that made me burst into tears upon first watch.

3. “Come Thou Fount Every Blessing” (Sufjan’s Version)

There are only 3 songs since Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” that belong to the holiday canon, NSYNC’s “Happy Holidays”, Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath The Tree”, and Sufjan’s cover of the 1758 hymn that was once featured in an Olive Garden commercial.

2. “Run Away With Me”

This song is the dark inversion of the Carly Rae Jepsen anthem of the same name, less a triumph and more a seduction into the unknown, but I have very poor judgment so I hear this and think “sure why not!”

1. “Mystery of Love”

This Oscar-nominated absolute corker of a song holds the honor as the Sufjan track I’ve spent too many nights banging out on piano and annoying my patient neighbors.

Jennifer C. Martin

Jennifer C. Martin is a writer, editor, and speaker living in Richmond, VA, with her two partners and two children. She writes, reads, and speaks about religion, politics, polyamory, sexuality, culture, entertainment, and more. When she's not trolling online or updating her blog, Dirtbag Christian, she's in the kitchen making baked goods, doing yoga, editing and writing for Olney Magazine, gaming, or going to therapy. She is a member of the United Church of Christ.

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Despite being a massive fan of his work, I've never attended a Sufjan Stevens concert. I wonder if it's because I'm so much of a homebody that I always miss it, or maybe he just doesn't tour much around the American South. But despite that, he's indirectly been a part of my life since high school, seeing me through wildly shifting views on politics, religion, sexuality, and emotions.

I went from being a depressed closeted queer conservative Christian emo teenager to a bleeding heart, openly queer Christian misfit adult. And nobody filled in those gaps between my leaps of faith quite like Sufjan did. While his personal life remains private, I still connect to whatever he expresses in his music. It was hard for me to narrow down my favorites, but each song on this list is one I've genuinely listened to repeatedly and has immense meaning for me, too.

5. “Chicago”

I was almost too embarrassed to include "Chicago" on my list. That's every aging millennial's foray into Sufjan Stevens, correct? Well, guess what: it was mine too. There was a girl in my 12th-grade math class named Valerie. It was 2005, and since she was nice to me when we sat together, I looked up her MySpace profile. Enchanting music began playing immediately. MySpace’s automatic music players would be considered an online faux pas today on any website, but it was one of the most important ways to discover music back in the aughts. And yes, the song on Valerie’s profile was "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens.

I'd never been to Chicago at the time, and it seemed magical and far away to me, which is precisely what the song evoked in me. The music beautifully dances its way into an entire orchestral movement and a Polyphonic Spree-esque choir that pauses only for Sufjan to share his vagabond maybe-true stories of friends and travel. It was emotional, but not in the same way that the hardcore emo bands and songs of the day were emotional. This was the vulnerability of self, not just heartbreak about romantic love. It was sweet and tender long before "soft bois" were a thing. There was no machismo or macho personality here.

After listening to the song for the fifth time, I changed my AOL Instant Messenger status to "All things go, all things go." I couldn't stop listening to it and was hooked on Sufjan right then and there.

4. “Come On! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance”

The day after Thanksgiving, I load up Sufjan Stevens' album Songs for Christmas and make everybody listen to it while we decorate the house for the holidays. He's a master of Christmas music, especially that chiming, mainline Protestant hymn-inspired kind. That could be why he's recorded no less than 100 Christmas songs, including multiple versions of some. He does the classics and includes non-holiday hymns as well, but there are a few Sufjan original holiday jingles out there.

But "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance" is maybe the catchiest and most pop-inspired of his Christmas recordings. It's ridiculous too: He's just singing random Christmas-inspired phrases while the theme moves between Santa and Jesus interchangeably. It's all cling-clang-y and joyful without much sense. What I like so much about this song is that it feels like the perfect mishmash of secular, commercialized Christmas and Americanized religious Christmas all rolled into one. But, only the good parts, you know? Because that's how we make it through the holiday season each year in the first place. We can't all be cynics all the time.

3. “Casimir Pulaski Day”

Like "Chicago," "Casimir Pulaski Day" is from Stevens' esteemed Illinois album and is both a song and an actual holiday people celebrate in the state. If you've never listened to this Sufjan Stevens song, or if you've mercifully forgotten it, I'd like to apologize in advance. Because this is the saddest song I've ever heard: a story (maybe a true one) of a young Sufjan's love interest dying of bone cancer when she's only a teenager. While this isn't anything I have personal experience with myself, I do have experience with the underlying theme: believing God can save someone if you pray hard enough and then your faith failing because He doesn't.

Yes, Sufjan is famously a Christian. But very few musical artists who claim to be Christian sing boldly about the seeming cruelties of life at the hands of a seemingly omnipotent creator. How fair is it when a child gets bone cancer? All the theology around this topic is petty and unhelpful; sometimes, we just want to yell at God, and I feel like Sufjan does that well. The song trails off with, "And He takes and He takes and He takes." That sentiment is one you'll certainly never hear on mainstream Christian radio.

2. “The Only Thing”

While "Casimir Pulaski Day" is an external tragedy, "The Only Thing" (from one of the most critically acclaimed Sufjan Stevens albums, Carrie & Lowell) is more of an internal reckoning. Maybe it hearkens back to my aforementioned days as an emo teenager, but I don't shy away from lyrics dealing with heavy topics like suicidal ideation. The entire album was written after the death of Sufjan's mother, with whom he had a distant and strained relationship. He began indulging in the same self-destructive behavior that she had: drugs, alcohol, and reckless hookups.

"Do I care if I survive this?" asks Sufjan. But despite the melodramatic tone, simple music, and devastating lyrics, it's quite nearly an optimistic song, especially if you've dealt with severe, long-lasting mental illness like I have. Though the song's title says that only one thing keeps Sufjan from killing himself, he lists multiple reasons to live throughout. The music is a masterpiece in the messy kind of grief that most humans can't properly verbalize – especially men. I can't think of many other mainstream singers who would get away with writing a song like "The Only Thing."

1. “Mystery of Love”

Many people rue the day that their favorite singer sells out or becomes commercialized. Still, when I learned that Sufjan Stevens would be doing the album for a queer coming-of-age love story movie called Call Me by Your Name, I was ecstatic to see him finally make it to the mainstream. The lead single from the album, "Mystery of Love," deserved its attention and respect. And while it was a short trip to the top (we did get to see him perform at the Academy Awards, though!) for a film that might be a bit problematic in retrospect, I still love the soundtrack and that the saddest Christian-ish boy in history contributed to a gay movie. Hear, hear!

Sufjan had long been plagued by rumors that his songs were riddled with queer themes. There was once a popular Facebook group called "Is This Sufjan Stevens Song Gay or Just About God?" While his private life is totally under wraps, we can at least admit that "Mystery of Love" is pretty queer, right? The whole soundtrack is.

"Mystery of Love" is the perfect introduction to Sufjan Stevens. You'll immediately know whether he's for you when you listen to it. There's mention of Greek tragedies, God, the natural world, and sadness. It feels queer, sacred, and the entire time, you're unsure if this is about romantic love or something more intangible. It's impossible to know for sure. Blessed be the mystery of love, and blessed be the mystery of Sufjan.

Phil Christman

Phil Christman is a writer and teacher living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can find more of his work at philipchristman.com.

Five Sufjan Songs, In No Order

1. “The Dress Looks Nice On You”

See, the thing is, you, the person reading this, are probably young, whereas I, by contrast, am: old. To you Sufjan Stevens is ballet soundtracks and five-disc New Age albums about the death of his father and Call Me By Your Name background music and collabs with fancy art museums and hard pop turns undermined by his own invincible moroseness. Whereas to me, Sufjan is maybe the most important artist to come out of a weird 90s experiment that we might call Let’s Try Christian Music Again But Good. He’s the culmination of Over the Rhine, the Innocence Mission, Jeremy Enigk’s solo album, Velour 100, Starflyer 59, Danielson—and further back, blessed Terry Taylor and Mark Heard. He’s the guy who used to gig around Clinton-era West Michigan in a band named after his own brother. He’s the guy whose idea of a funny April Fool’s gag is announcing that Rosie Thomas is having his baby (that’s one way to throw the not-yet-affirming Christian college concert bookers off the scent, I guess). That’s my Sufjan. Because I’m old. And Seven Swans, the whole record, but especially this hopeful shimmer of a song, is what we’d sing in church if we weren’t afraid of each other.

2. “America”

This song blends the blip-and-moan current-day-pop style of The Ascension with the soaring ambition of Illinois Sufjan.

3. “Fourth of July”

People talk about this record like it’s a Von Trier film. It’s rough, sure, but part of the reason it’s rough is that it doesn’t forget to be beautiful. It reminds you what death is going to make you miss.

4. “Chicago”

I’m trying to apologize less for liking basic-ass things—Superman (who used to be on this album’s cover), paninis from Panera, dogs, Beatles songs. These things evolved or were engineered to be adored. You can’t just spend your life staring them down. And when this song hits its big crescendo, I still get those oceanic feelings, even though the critical part of my brain thinks about how Little Miss Sunshine was mid.

5. “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti”

There’s this Ancient Near Eastern religion that I sometimes fw that says God feels about all of us the exact shade of compassionate longing that Sufjan puts into this song. Yeah, most of the time I don’t believe it either. But what better thing was I going to do with my life than bet on the possibility? Be “successful”? Ugh. I’d rather listen to this song.

Sunil Patel

Sunil Patel consumes narrative the way he consumes nachos: with reckless abandon and guacamole. Books, comics, songs, TV, movies, podcasts, you name it, he just wants to be told a good story. And write one! He once sold a 985-word kale joke to Asimov's Science Fiction. When he’s not watching and reviewing hundreds of movies a year (https://letterboxd.com/ghostwritingcow/), he’s writing, acting, and directing with San Francisco Bay Area sketch comedy group Quicksand Club. He lives in Oakland with his Blu-ray of Kiki’s Delivery Service. Read his work and discover his secret origins at ghostwritingcow.com.

I discovered Sufjan Stevens during my indie rock phase in grad school, so he holds a special nostalgic place in my heart, but that also means my Sufjan Stevens experience is basically just Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois, as I lost track of him after that. How could he follow up Illinois, after all? Back then, I thought it was one of the best albums I’d ever heard. Revisiting it now…I still think that. When Tyler asked me to pick my five favorite Sufjan Stevens songs, I wanted to just pick any five songs from Illinois, but I restrained myself to only picking four.

“Come On! Feel the Illinoise! (Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition – Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream)”

What a title! What a song! I don’t think I’d ever heard anything like this in my life. I didn’t know music could be like this. The jaunty piano melody, the horns mimicking the choir melody—and I’m notorious for hating horns!—the gorgeous strings, and then Sufjan Stevens’s lovely voice. It’s such a unique, unexpected blend of sounds, and yet it all comes together perfectly here. I love the excessive amount of rhyming in this song from the silly “Ancient hieroglyphic or the South Pacific / Typically terrific, busy and prolific” to the solemn “Oh, God of Progress / Have you degraded or forgot us?” I’ll admit, I’m much more here for Part I than Part II, but this whole thing is a real musical journey.

“Jacksonville”

Even though this song confuses me because the only Jacksonville I know is in Florida, I love the strings in this track that respond to Stevens after every couple lines. There’s something so chill and calming about this song, even when the horns come in to toot a little celebration that mimics the verse melody…and then actually joins along with Stevens!

“Chicago”

Look, I know this song is likely to be on many, many other lists—it’s so popular it even gets referenced in “Hands Open” by Snow Patrol—but I can’t not include it, not when I started to fucking tear up just hearing “I fell in love again / All things go, all things go.” This might be one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard? It’s a perfect road trip song. The Illinoisemaker Choir chorus that includes lines like “To recreate us / All things grow, all things grow” perfectly conveys the assertion that we will all continue to grow and change throughout our lives, that it’s a natural part of being a person. But the part that kills me every time is in the bridge when Sufjan Stevens simply repeats, “I made a lot of mistakes.” (Hold on, I’m crying, I told you it kills me every time.) Stevens is so matter-of-fact about his admission, but with each repetition, he subtly changes his delivery so that the line rises to become something almost triumphant in its reclamation. We begin on a note of regret, but we end on a note of hope.

“The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts”

Did I pick this song simply because I’m a comic book nerd? Did I pick this song simply because I once titled something “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Farts”? Who’s to say. Perhaps I want to include it because it effectively sullies the pretty baroque pop sound Sufjan Stevens uses in most of the album with some distorted electric guitars and raucous drums. Perhaps I want to highlight the lovely message the Illinoisemaker Choir provides with “We have a lot to give one another.” Perhaps I want to dance around and sing, “Na na na na NA na, na na na na NA na.” Who’s to say.

“Seven Swans”

I love the songs from Illinois for being polished and pretty. I love “Seven Swans” for being raw and real. The sparse guitar in minor key has a completely different vibe from anything on that more lush album, and Stevens himself sounds less like an angel and more like a human being struggling with his faith. This song is so quiet, like a secret confession, and when it suddenly becomes ominous with “He will take you / If you run / He will chase you,” it’s legitimately stirring, but not as stirring as when Stevens intones, “Because He is the Loooooooooooooord,” as the guitar becomes more discordant and the drums crash. It’s an utterly transcendent climax to the song. I know that he’s positioning the Christian God as a frightening being, yet the power and conviction in his voice make this Hindu agnostic want to believe in Him.

Mitchell Atencio

Mitchell Atencio is a discalced news editor and writer living in Alexandria, VA, with his spouse Mick. You can find him on a tennis court, in a coffee shop, or at sojo.net.

“Love Yourself”

In May of 2019, I was freshly married and Sufjan released the Pride Month-themed Love Yourself / With My Whole Heart. I was working at Grace Records in Gilbert, AZ, and the 7-inch vinyl was part of the Record Store Day release that summer.

By virtue of working in the record shop, I had listened to probably every Sufjan song at least twice. But, admittedly, that’s about as far as I could get with a lot of his previous releases. Don’t get me wrong, Sufjan is incredible and one of those musicians I think every artist and writer would be good to study. But for the most part, I haven’t found his work to click for me on a deeper level. And that’s OK, everything can’t be for everybody.

But this EP was different. I can’t really say how big a departure it is from his other work, but at the time it felt distinctly like meeting a multiverse version of Sufjan. And I loved it. I bought one before we even opened for the day, which probably broke RSD code, and I have played it numerous times ever since. The message means a lot to me, a bisexual who really doesn’t fuck with gender, but the music is just infectious. I think it reminds me of unpacking my house with my spouse Mick, the first place I lived aside from the homes I grew up in. I think it also reminds me of our honeymoon in San Francisco and breakfast in the Castro.

Whether or not the new album gets more than two plays from me remains to be seen, but you can trust that I’ll keep playing my orange 7-inch vinyl until the grooves entirely wear down. I love that EP with my whole heart.

Tyler Huckabee

Tyler Huckabee’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Sojourners, The Week and Bright Wall: Dark Room. You can follow him on Bluesky or by subscribing to this Substack you’re reading right now!

There’s this line in “Casimir Pulaski Day” — you know the one: “Tuesday night at the Bible study we lift our hands and pray over your body but nothing ever happens.” This line — apparently about a childhood friend’s battle with cancer — blew me over when I first heard it. Where I was going to college, you simply were not allowed to say that. You could say you were “waiting on God” or that He was “working in mysterious ways.” But you could not say the plainly obvious fact of the matter, something that millions of people around the world experience every year. And the fact that it came from the same guy who wrote “The Transfiguration”? Which is just plainly about how cool it is that Jesus took Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain to reveal his glory? And Sufjan could sing both of these things, with all the apparent contradictions? It felt like unlocking a door to a bigger room. “Have no fear! We draw near!”

“Casimir Pulaski Day” isn’t in my top five Sufjan songs, but it was probably the one that made me realize this guy was gonna be important to me. Well, that and “Chicago.” “Chicago” is important to everyone.

Convention has it that there are two Sufjans — the glorious orchestral folk pop seabird and the mad electronica soundscape wizard. (I suggest that there is also a third Sufjan: a jolly little Christmas elf). It’s to his credit that he continues to push himself in the latter even when he’s among the most naturally gifted to ever try his hand at the former. He can write a gorgeous melody in his sleep, but he doesn’t want to sleep through his creative process. So he continues to experiment with whole new sounds and structures you really won’t get from anyone else. Some of his finest stuff comes when he mixes the two impulses, letting his knack for angelic melody hang out the experimental demon on his other shoulder.

5. “Tonya Harding (in D major)”

This song was apparently a bit of a white whale, a song Sufjan struggled with for years before that I, Tonya movie finally lit a fire under his ass. He accomplishes in five minutes what that movie couldn’t pull off in two hours, sketching a dimensional portrait of an exquisite talent who accomplished the impossible while being bullied by pretty much everyone in the world until one of the few guys who actually gave a damn about her decided it was time they took matters into their own hands. “This world is a cold one, but it takes one to know one,” Sufjan says, applying his famous penchant for bird’s eye view historic detail to this contemporary “American Princess,” all while his glittery orchestration evokes the glide of a skate across the ice and the twirls nobody could do quite like her. In some ways, the quintessential Sufjan song.

4. “The Mistress Witch From McClure (or, the Mind That Knows Itself)”

I can barely stand the beauty of this song’s opening lines, which are nothing special: “and the winter moves about Illinois.” I have no explanation for this. This song itself has no explanation. He “opened up” about it to Pitchfork in 2006.

Sufjan: And “The Mistress Witch of McClure” song is based on some… [pause] experiences that I had.
Pitchfork: Would you care to elaborate on that at all?
Sufjan: Probably not.

I guess it’s for the best. “What’s most personal is most universal,” as the saying goes, and Sufjan is sort of a living testament to the truth of that. No matter how intimate Sufjan’s line about “my father runs undressed, he’s pointing at my throat” may be to him, those plaintive horns traverse the distance the specificity of those lyrics can’t. It feels ripped from my own diary.

3. “Sister Winter”

Something you don’t hear brought up much in conversations about Sufjan is his voice. He’s a very good singer. There’s so much else to talk about that the vehicle for all this kind of gets lost in the shuffle, but he can match his vocals to the enormous array of emotions his music brings to the table with a lot of skill. “Sister Winter” is a good showcase, as he starts out in the feathery whisper we got used to on Seven Swans and ramps up right along with the music, never a step out of place with the bombastic finale.

I used to get very depressed around Christmastime, partly because I was just generally depressed and partly because there was a big gulf between the celebratory Christian-y things I was supposed to feel and how I actually felt. And wouldn’t you know it, here comes Sufjan, singing glumly about seasonal depressive disorder and a loop of those repeating choruses he does so well. “All my friends, I’ve returned to Sister Winter!” he wails. “All my friends, I apologize!” It captures that feeling of guilt that accompanies depressive bouts, where you can’t believe you’re putting people you love through this shit again, which just makes you more depressed. But in this song, the apology seems to unlock something, building to an unbearable tension that explodes into a yuletide parade. “Sister Winter” has a psalmic framework, tracing a path from the valley to the mountaintop. It’s both ecumenically apt and emotionally poignant. It never quite feels like Christmas until I’ve played it.

2. “Death With Dignity”

The Carrie and Lowell opener is a gorgeous bit of table setting for his most intimate work. It’s pretty unique among the Sufjan first tracks catalog. His “Futile Devices” opener on Age of Adz is a pump fake. Illinois has both an epigraph (“Concerning the UFO Sighting…”) and a prologue (“The Black Hawk War”) before it actually gets going. But “Death With Dignity” is a straightforward introduction to this meditation on the death of his mother, and that also honestly sets up what listeners can expect from the next ten songs.

Even when he’s operating at his finger-plucking simplest, Sufjan knows how to surprise, skipping along with a melody so elegantly natural you can’t believe nobody’s used it till now, before taking a sharp left turn into that ghostly “I lost my strength compleeeeeetely.” It all makes the poignancy of the final verse’s “you’ll never see us again” land like a battle ax. “I don’t know where to begin.” Could have fooled me.

1. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!”

This is kind of like saying “Stairway to Heaven” is your favorite Zeppelin song or “Enter Sandman” is your favorite Metallica song. But what do you want me to say? That I don’t feel my insides bloom every single time I hear Sufjan and the gang launch into that “OH! GREAT! SIGHTS UP! ON! THIS! STATE! HALLELUJAH!”? Dear reader, I would be lying!

This song’s got it all. Fragile, campfire guitar picking. Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink instrumental flourishes. Worshipful doxology. A little bit of romance. This is probably Patient Zero for the whole “Is Sufjan queer?” conversation, which is still treated like an unsolved mystery even though he sings “touching his back with my hand, I kiss him” here, which sure would seem to put the whole question to bed.

Sufjan has talked a lot about a Methodist camp he attended as a teenager that served as the site of several significant spiritual and sexual firsts (sort of sums up the whole Christian summer camp experience imo). He has said this song was inspired by a story he swears is “totally true” about getting lost with a fellow camper in the woods and stumbling across a wasp that was “the size of a Goodyear blimp” that chased them into a cave where they lived on candy bars for several days.

“That story is a little hard to believe, Tyler.” OK, well, you weren’t there, were you? And even if the size of the wasp might fluctuate a little in the telling, what sticks about this song is the wail of “we were in love!” and, later: “I love him each day” — the way those early infatuations mark you like Cain for the rest of your life.

That Methodist camp seems like a skeleton key to understanding a lot of Sufjan’s whole thing — the woozy intersection of romantic and spiritual love. Lots of Christian artists in the early ‘00s were making a play for mainstream radio play by being deliberately coy about whether their song was about God or a crush, but Sufjan doesn’t always seem like he knows which one he’s singing to. Or maybe he’s decided that, in the final analysis, it’s all the same thing.

Tanner Huckabee

Tanner is a husband, father, medical professional and my brother, in that order. Since so much of our own sibling relationship involved Sufjan, I thought I’d ask for his opinions on the guy.

Sufjan found me in 2006, when my pal John burnt me a copy of The Avalanche he downloaded from Limewire. Sufjan’s earlier work stumbled in and out of my life, but nothing ever quite distracted me from my metal leaning music interests. I remember almost awkwardly in detail the setting and scenario and how adamant John was that this album was one of the greatest musical achievements he had ever listened to. Thanks, John.

Since then I have been exquisitely tied to every musical venture Sufjan created. I’m not sure if I can say this of any other artist, but I consider it an honor to be able to experience in real-time the work and creativity of one of the most profound artists of our time.

The task of whittling down Sufjan’s catalog of work to five tracks has been all but impossible. It damn near feels like a sin to scratch some tracks off this list.

1. “From The Mouth of Gabriel”

Whenever someone asks me about my favorite Sufjan song, my reflex response is this one. Not because of any exaggeration, but because it encapsulates every musical element he's ever explored in a fantastic four-minute burst of perfection. It's essential. It's flawless.

2. “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!”

This song unfolds like golden honey, tracing the intricate path of our hidden shame, which often keeps us from embracing our true selves. Musically, it's a delicate masterpiece, tenderly navigating the complex terrain of unrequited love.

3. “My Rajneesh”

Almost my favorite vocal performance from Sufjan. Poignant and tender delivery while the music gradually unfolds into a monstrous, almost maniacal, chaos. Amid this tempest, Sufjan's voice continually acts as a lightning rod, skillfully channeling and directing this

This track always feels like the journey we take from joy and hope to loss and confusion when the unknown doesn’t turn out how our optimist mind would like.

4. “All Delighted People”

Ambitious, almost foolishly so, yet finds enough commonality to remain grounded and humble. The warbly choir vocals, the edging chaos of forty different instruments, the constant crescendos and decrescendos, the four minute outro that cycles through seven different genres — this should not work!! As with many of Sufjan’s project, this is unparalleled confidence and construction. How do you sit down and write this stuff…

5. “The Owl and the Tanager”

My actual favorite vocal performance by Sufjan. Fragile, hushed, tragically restrained. To me, this song delves into the complexities of love. The darkness and mystery of the owl meeting the vibrancy and freedom of the tanager, navigating the forever battle of embracing our inherent selves, altering our ideals, and conforming to fit an expectation. This track crushes me. Every. Single. Time.

6. “Come on! Feel the Illinoise!! Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In a Dream”

This track gets everything absurdly, beautifully right. Expansive in lyric construction and musical composition, it feels like the best road trip you’ve ever taken. The iconic piano plunking, the swelling spunky bass line, the theatrical signature change from 5/4 to 4/4 - I can’t help but feel this is representative of being enveloped in the always dynamic Illinois weather.

(Name Withheld By Request)

I had always listened to Sufjan, but he became essential listening to me when I looked myself in the mirror 5 years ago and determined that I was not only queer, but that I still wanted to understand and know god more. That for some reason, despite everything I had been told growing up, that god still liked me the way I was.

Sufjan’s music opened a path for me that held both God and sexuality in tandem — open in conversation, rather than in opposition, and gave me permission to walk away from fear and into curiosity for who I was becoming.

And on a lighter note, the classical work that Sufjan has been doing with collaborators like Timo Andres and Conor Hanick rips. Really reignited something in me to remind me how wonderful piano is.

1. “Ekstasis” (Sufjan Stevens, Timo Andres, Conor Hanick)