
Sufjan Stevens, the Michigan-born singer, has gone through a great deal in his life, arguably enough for two lifetimes. In 2015, on his album Carrie and Lowell, he recited his grief after his bipolar mother’s passing. Last month, he revealed he is suffering from an autoimmune disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). He has now, as of October 6th, released his new album Javelin, a project of which much was speculated. You never quite know what you’re getting into when listening to a Sufjan Stevens album. In the early 2000s, he announced he was planning on writing an album for each state. However, it’s been almost 20 years since the last state album, Illinois, was released, and the only other state album that exists is Michigan. In 2020, he released an album called The Ascension, which apparently took inspiration from pop singer Ariana Grande. “I think that the Ariana Grande song kind of woke me up, ‘Thank U, Next,’” he said. One last random, but note-worthy artistic choice by Stevens was naming the album closer on his latest album “And I Shall Come to You Like a Stormtrooper in Drag Serving Imperial Realness.” So, I will reiterate: You never know what you’re gonna get with Sufjan Stevens.
The songs released prior to the new album brought music critics and fans alike to believe that Javelin must be about a break up. He sings on the first single, “So you are tired of us/So rest your head/Turning back fourteen years of us.” The track begins with soft, folk-like production, and eventually erupts into a huge choir and an arrangement of synths. The second single, “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” was even named “Best New Track” by the music critic publication Pitchfork.
However, the album release took a much heavier and devastating turn after he posted a photo on his Instagram, revealing one of his most recent hardships. In the caption, Stevens wrote “this album is dedicated to the light of my life, my beloved partner and best friend Evans Richardson, who passed away in April.”
Although I had already expected the album to be a hard listen, this news about his partner’s death and his ensuing grief made it all the more vulnerable and crushing. Nevertheless, when I saw other people talk about the post online and what it meant for his new work, everybody seemed to have focused on his partner being a man. They were not necessarily viewing this in a negative light, but simply shocked, as Stevens had never been so explicit about his sexuality.
At first, I was really just perplexed at how clueless other fans had been, and if they ever actually paid attention to his lyrics. One of my favorite tracks by him, with the ridiculously long title “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!”, was released all the way back in 2005. In the song, he narrates an experience he had at a Methodist summer camp when he was a teenager, and the romantic, secret encounter he had with a friend – a male friend. He describes the scenario beautifully, singing “Touching his back with my hand I kiss him/I see the wasp on the length of my arm.” As the song progresses, and becomes more and more dramatic, he confesses sorrowfully “My friend is gone, he ran away/I can tell you, I love him each day.”
I think the song is pretty implicit about his sexuality, one he is growing to be more comfortable with in the face of the media, especially considering how private Stevens can be about his life. Nevertheless, I can see why so many people were so surprised at his lost partner being a man, as he’s never explicitly stated his orientation. I always hope that art released by queer artists serves as a lesson that grief, love, despair – they’re all feelings which transcend a person’s sexuality. Death and disease does not discriminate between those who belong to marginalized communities and those who do, and these tragedies should act as a means of connection, a not-so-subtle reminder that we are not all that different. Fortunately, Stevens’ listeners have been very accepting of his sexuality. Many have found the news to be even more heavy because of it, the photo practically being a coming-out post and tribute all in one.

I believe this album, and projects by other artists who have faced such huge amounts of heartache, serves as a lesson of how important it is to find a way to express yourself after loss. When I discussed this album with my friend, we were mesmerized and impressed by his ability to put out such beautiful pieces of work at the lowest points of his life. We agreed that if half the things that have happened to him had happened to us, we’d be paralyzed in our sadness, unable to really do anything. Stevens achieves the opposite: he finds solace in creating music, writing lyrics, and processing his grief aloud in his own language, a language that might resonate with others who have also gone through similar experiences. His motives for creating art are no longer towards success or praise; there is a big possibility that they have never been. Maybe he is just trying to reach his companion on the other side, sending a song that he hopes will somehow reunite them in spirit.
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