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
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.
I do wonder if people aren't just interested in music that has meaning, ... Because there's been kind of an exhaustion through forms and genres, like rock and electronica, doing away with melodies, and I think maybe we're always interested in songs - folk songs, hymns. Whatever. Patriotic songs with strong melodies. It's kind of the basis of what I'm doing now, just focusing on traditional songwriting.
Everyone seems really concerned for me now about the prospect. They use this word 'daunting' all the time.
I'm pretty involved in everything I do, which isn't always efficient and doesn't necessarily make for the more successful product. But I do feel that, in that sense, everything I do has a comprehensiveness to it.
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,
It's really about a sensory experience and getting fully involved and fully entrenched in the pageantry of Illinois.
It's really about a sensory experience and getting fully involved and entrenched in the pageantry of Illinois,
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'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.
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.
Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we're guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that's a bastardized rendering of a faith.
I come from a folk tradition where you just dance however you feel comfortable.
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.