On
November 13, 2012 Sufjan Stevens will release his second collection of
Christmas recordings entitled Silver & Gold, so I figured it was finally time for me to tell the world why I hate
him so much.
I remember exactly where I was the
first time I heard Sufjan Stevens. It
was the summer of 2005. I was not
married yet, still living at home, and my mom was having a garage sale. It was a Saturday and it came in the mail
that morning. I had ordered the CD from
Asthmatic Kitty itself (Sufjan’s record label), and the one that came in the
mail actually had the infamous picture of Superman on the front, the one DCcomics made him change or else (consequently, I actually ruined this version of
the album due to a leaky window in my car [pouty sad face].
A
few months earlier I had heard about this guy named Soof-John who was releasing
a concept album about the state of Illinois.
My interest was piqued if only because this was my own state, the land
(of Lincoln!) that I call home. To me, I
had no choice: I had to buy this album, if only out of curiosity and a little
bit of patriotism. I had no idea what he
sounded like, no idea what to expect, but only that he was somewhat folksy and
had made an album about his own state of Michigan a few years earlier.
So,
when I finally took off the cellophane and put the disc into a CD player, I was
completely stunned at what I heard. His
music immediately transported me to a world I had never been to before, but it
was also a world I knew I was meant to live in.
Sufjan was playing the music that existed deep in my subconscious; it
was the music I had always wanted to hear (and he used lots of marimbas too!).
From the haunting piano, wandering flutes, and indiscernible time
signature of “Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois,” to the paradoxically
epic and yet intimate “COME ON! FEEL THE ILLINOISE!,” to the beautifully
overwhelming melodies and harmonies of about ten other songs on the album, I knew that for
some reason I had come home, musically speaking.
Thus
began my obsession with Sufjan. Now, I own
nearly everything he has ever put out—even all the obscure little recordings
that are hard to find I have managed to download somehow (I even have some
bootleg recordings of a few of his concerts).
I felt a kinship to Sufjan—as if we were the same personality and that
if we actually knew each other we would actually be friends. I came to believe that I understood his art
like no one else—that I actually ‘got it.’ (taking a step back, this is all
starting to get a bit too Mark David Chapman for my tastes. I mean really—whoa!). I even recorded an album of my own music that
was a partial musical response to Illinoise. I was trying to see if I could keep up with
him musically—to see if I had the same chops (yeah, probably not).
So,
with the advent of his upcoming release Silver
& Gold I am needless to say very excited. Even though I do not think everything he does
is a knock-it-out-of-the-park homer, I just cannot wait to be blown away again. I love Sufjan Stevens and I think he is the
premier songwriter of our time.
And
yet, I hate Sufjan Stevens. Every
time I listen to his music, if I let it, a stream of rage begins to seethe
within me. You see, Sufjan drives me mad
and now it is time that I tell people about it.
Trust me, I have my reasons, and over the course of the next couple of
weeks leading up to the new album I am going to have a series of entries
listing them all!
For
today’s entry I will give you my first two reasons.
Why
I hate Sufjan Stevens: Reason #1
Melodies
that get stuck in your head—for days on end
Since 2005 when I first heard Sufjan,
his music has gotten stuck in my head more than any other artist. When I saw him in concert during his 2006 tour
he performed a new song called “Majesty Snowbird,” and as he was playing it I
realized the melody was so beautiful I had to do my best to try and memorize then
and there. Thankfully, the song was over
10 minutes long (this issue will be addressed in a future “Why I Hate Sufjan”),
so I had plenty of time to lock it into my memory. The song was stuck in my head for a week, and
I eventually found a bootleg recording of the song just so I could torture
myself further. But this ear-worm
phenomenon has happened with many many other Sufjan songs, even songs with (IMHO)
mediocre melodies (such as “All Delighted People”). So, to be concise, the reason I hate Sufjan
so much is that his melodies are so good I have trouble getting them out of my
head.
Why
I hate Sufjan Stevens: Reason #2
Epic Concept Albums
(that is, Tackling
Monstrously Large Themes in his Lyrics and Still Making Them Personal)
Basically everything he’s ever done has
been a concept album—even Age of Adz
was a concept album that somehow combined the prophecies/love life of a recluse
schizophrenic poet/artist/prophet (Royal Robertson) with Sufjan’s own love life
or at least the love lives of the characters he was singing about (who were
often named Sufjan themselves!). Then he
managed to give this crazy amalgam of subject matter eerie apocalyptic undertones,
rendering Royal’s and Sufjan’s personal traumas as traumas for the whole
universe! So, no matter what he does
Sufjan cannot help but make his work epic.
He did the same thing for the Illinois
album as well, by choosing to merge every song that was based around a person,
place, or event in Illinois into his own life’s narrative. He did this fearing that the civic and
historic subjects of the state had become too bland and coldly distant, too
much of an objective case study, or an eighth grade history diorama rather than
work of art (this is according to interviews at the time of Illinoise’s
release).
___________________________________________Don't worry, there's more!
Up next: Reasons
