Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevensis an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He first came to wider recognition with the 2000 album, A Sun Came, which was released on the Asthmatic Kitty label he co-founded with his stepfather. He is perhaps best known for his 2005 album, Illinois, which hit number one on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, and for the single "Chicago" from that album...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth1 July 1975
CountryUnited States of America
My anxiety level of my own work and what I'm doing and focusing on my art and all of that stuff? That's fundamental.
You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I don't think it's art. I just think it's music. It is what it is.
Art is … a reflection of a greater divine creation. There really is no separation.
My only concern about art collaborations is that I never thought of myself as an Artist. My tax forms say Musician/Songwriter.
I'm being explicit about really horrifying experiences in my life, but my hope has always been to be responsible as an artist and to avoid indulging in my misery, or to come off as an exhibitionist. I don't want to make the listener complicit in my vulnerable prose poem of depression, I just want to honor the experience. I'm not the victim here, and I'm not seeking other peoples' sympathy. I don't blame my parents, they did the best they could.
I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it.
program. ''It puts us in the attitude of respect for our audience. I think it's important on every level to have a kind of attitude of unification in some way. . . . I don't really have that naturally. I'm not a great performer, so we have to do everything we can, do the exercises, to prepare.
I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.'
I still feel like I have a lot to learn in the realm of sound experimentation, and I think I would like things to get noisier and weirder and more distressed and more aggressive, but I don't know if that's something that would be suitable for public consumption.
I don't think it's so hard to be commercial and interesting. Look at Prince, or Neil Young.
I come from a folk tradition where you just dance however you feel comfortable.
I'd like to do a record that doesn't even reference actual places. Because I think it's kind of an open-ended concept. It doesn't have to be taken so literally.
Pop music is so structured, and I'm excited to try and challenge that in my own work.
So I'm a little worried about that though I know I don't have to worry about these things in the way, I don't know, that Cher has to worry about it.