"Should Have Known Better" by Sufjan Stevens, Tuesday, May 11, 2021 (Trigger Warning: Child Abuse/Abandonment, Death/Grief)

 

In March of 2015, Sufjan Stevens released Carrie & Lowell, and the album was praised by indie music journals and NPR. In May of that year, a study concluded that most of the number one hits from 2005-2014 were written on the reading level of a fifth grader.  Maybe that's the reason I don't spend too much time wrestling with finding the meaning of the text in most song lyrics. However, whenever I choose a Sufjan Stevens song, I spend quite a bit of time reading the Genius annotations, discovering hidden metaphors and symbolism that don't appear until quite a few listens. "Should Have Known Better" is the second track on the album, following his invocation of the muse in "Death with Dignity." Stevens recalls more specific, particularly the jarring details about when his mother "left [him and his brother] at that video store" when he was three or four. 

THE PAST IS STILL THE PAST, THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE. As Stevens gets more specific on Carrie & Lowell, he still is painting a beautiful scene of Oregon, wrapped with geographical references. He's painting the scenery he remembers when he went to visit his mother when she was married to Lowell Brams. Sifting through the memories, Stevens feels a guilt for not reaching out to his mother in her later life. He feels like he "should have [written] a letter" to her to reach out to her, but traumatized by his experiences with her, he tries to live his adult life well-adjusted by forgetting his painful memories. However, it was only through Lowell Brams that Sufjan had a chance to know his mother, as she reached out after abandoning Stevens at the age of one. Sufjan visited his mother and Lowell for three summers, but Carrie later succumbed to substance abuse and bi-polar/schizophrenic episodes and left Lowell. Years later, Stevens met Brams again and they formed a musical partnership, Brams owning the record label that would release all of Stevens' music.

MY BROTHER HAD A DAUGHTER. THE BEAUTY THAT SHE BRINGS, ILLUMINATION. As the song picks up, keeps dropping metaphors and symbolism into his grief, but the major key change and the introduction of the synthesizer gives the song some resolve. After all, what do you do with the fact you should have, but you didn't, and now it's too late, but if I did I would have been too traumatized to move on? Stevens then throws the information, like talking to his mother's grave, telling her that his brother had a daughter, and she's beautiful. He's telling his mother that even though things could have been better and despite all of the grief, new life is possible because his mother gave them life. Of course, as grief is a process of tricking yourself until it's time to let the next part of it go, the song doesn't end on a major note. Like "Death with Dignity," "Should Have Known Better" ends funereally on minor sustained chords. The black shroud is laid back over his mother, and the listener is given a minute to grieve before the next track begins.

Read “Should Have Known Better” by Sufjan Stevens on Genius