“Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens, Friday, November 12, 2021

Sufjan Stevens Presents: Come On Feel the ILLINOISE was the breakthrough album from the singer-songwriter. The second in an ambitious series to create an album about each of the 50 states, though later retracted as a joke, Illinois topped Billboard's Heat Seekers charts and introduced countless new fans to Stevens' musical storytelling. Musically, Illinois is dense. Layer upon layer of sound is added to a composition that sounds sometimes like a marching band, sometimes like a jazz band, sometimes like a folk song, and sometimes like a symphony. Stevens prepared the lyrics by obsessively immersing himself in writers, poets, and historians who wrote about the state in order to reference some of the most Illinois things that locals of the small towns and large cities could pick up on the record. The album is rich in geography, historical figures, and mythology of the midwestern state.

I FELL IN LOVE AGAIN. Illinois has a score of 90% on Metacritic, ranking at number #54, at the time of writing this post, just above Carrie & Lowell at #55, which also has a score of 90%. I would personally rate Carrie & Lowell higher than Illinois based on listenability. Some of the moments on Illinois, while I don't dispute their artistry, are not as easy to listen to as the smooth sounds of album that tributes his mother. After lots of frills and instrumentation, Illinois starts to pick up momentum with the disturbing track "John Wayne Gacy, Jr" about the serial killer who preyed upon young men in the '70s. At track number 9, the soft orchestration of "Go! CHICAGO! Go! Yeah!"--better known by its single name "Chicago" starts. The musical contradiction of the soft strings playing the melody with the fast trumpet, piano, and drums creates a carefree youthful sound, with an underlying urgency. The lyrics are a semi-autobiographical roadtrip Stevens took with a friend from New York to Chicago. However, in the singer's unstable childhood, he spent some time living in Chicago, even going to his first rock concert in the city. There is a hopefulness in the song when the choir sings "All things go," making whatever hardship about sleeping in a van or selling your "clothes to the state" seem to be worth it.

IN A VAN, WITH MY FRIEND. My first exposure to Sufjan Stevens was this album, but I didn't jump on this record. My sister listened to it, but I thought it was a little too much "what the kids are listening to these days" when I was in college. I remember one of my roommates bought this album used at a massive used media store near my college. I slowly got into Sufjan Stevens, starting with "Casimir Pulaski Day," which examined a faith, despite not having a prayer answered. When I saw the movie Little Miss Sunshine, which featured "Chicago" I started listening to Stevens more. The quirky indie film about a family on a roadtrip for their daughter to fulfill her dream to enter a child beauty pageant, while each member works out his or her personal demons was quite a memorable comedic existential film that was only enhanced with two songs by Stevens on the soundtrack. "Chicago" both appeared in the trailer and in the film. In the trailer, we see the family running to catch their runaway yellow Volkswagen T2 Microbus. Listening to "Chicago" reminds me of that scene along with Steve Carell playing a suicidal Proust scholar, Paul Dano breaking his character's sworn silence after receiving some bad news, the comically creepy MC of the pageant, and of course, Little Miss Sunshine herself performing the *cough* dance routine, central to the film. Ultimately, though, the film is about family and the bond of being "in a van" together. I think the warm tones of Stevens' orchestration capture this togetherness. Even when there is so much sadness to be felt in his music, there are truly bright and beautiful moments too.

Read “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens on Genius.