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
distressed public realm weirder
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.
real broken car
I remember Detroit feeling really unsafe, feeling scared a lot. Our house was broken into, our car was stolen, we had to get a watchdog, we would get beat up in the street, I had my bike stolen. There was just a lot of real anarchy on the streets and sidewalks.
beautiful philosophical reality
I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.
real thinking drug
Some of my music requires an obsessive-compulsive approach and a real embodiment of excessiveness. So I really have to live in that world of overstimulation. Sometimes I think it's like a drug; more is more, and you can never get enough. The older I get, the more I crave that excessive aesthetic. It's never going to satisfy me.
real hard-times ordinary-world
If there's any kind of morality, for me, it's about reality; what is reality? I have a hard time distinguishing what is valuable when it comes to the real world and the fantasy world. Like, should I invest my time in the ordinary world or the imaginary world?
baby real diapers
An imaginary baby is so much easier than a real baby. No diapers to change.
song real writing
It's a mystical quality of music, that music isn't really concrete, and it's communicating abstractions about imaginary worlds. At least, my music's like that. It's not real. It's unreal, it's all fabrication. To write a song about Obama would suddenly break the spell.
casey
I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.'
evoke exciting illinois itself music seemed several states tone
I was working on several states simultaneously. The tone of the music for Illinois seemed much more exciting and challenging to me. The music itself seemed to evoke a very big character.
experience fully involved sensory
It's really about a sensory experience and getting fully involved and fully entrenched in the pageantry of Illinois.
experience fully involved sensory
It's really about a sensory experience and getting fully involved and entrenched in the pageantry of Illinois,
face glory oh shook shoulders takes took
Oh the glory when he took our place / But he took my shoulders and he shook my face / And he takes and he takes and he takes,
concerned seems word
Everyone seems really concerned for me now about the prospect. They use this word 'daunting' all the time.
attitude great level puts respect
It puts us in the attitude of respect for our audience. It's important on every level to have a kind of attitude of unification in some way. I don't have that naturally. I'm not a great performer, so we have to do everything we can, do the exercises, to prepare.