I picked up the 10th anniversary deluxe edition of Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell today. It is objectively a terrific album full of beautiful songs about loss and grief, but it is special to me because of a morbid connection: it was the soundtrack to the last few months of my mother’s life. Released a few months before we found out her cancer came back and metastasized, I listened to it non-stop throughout the year as I moved back home to take care of her, all the while watching her fade away. Brain tumours can fuck right off.
Catharsis or machoism, who even knows. What I DO know is that the record is inextricably connected to that period of my life. Thematically, but also emotionally. Music has a way of cutting through everything and connecting at a level so deep that you might not even realize was there. To me, Carrie and Lowell is a shortcut to a well of not-quite-processed grief about the person I felt unquestionably bonded to, a love that would be gauche to even verbalize (because Chinese).
Sufjan did not have that kind of relationship with his mom, the titular Carrie of the album whose death resulted in the songs on the album. She left him at a young age, and they did not reconnect until much later in his life. The narrative of the record was based on a fictional past he conjured up as he tried to work out his very-real grief towards a person whom he barely knew.
Without the backstory, what resulted can be characterized as a manifestation of raw emotion reified as pretty songs. Or something a lot more self-centred, if you see it the way Sufjan sees it in 2025. But if you just listened to the record, it’ll sound like a tribute to a loved one lost, a set of songs that someone in my position, already in huge fan of his, could easily connect with and then some.
And that I did. No matter how Sufjan himself feels about it himself, it is what it is to me. We speak about separating the art of the artist these days, usually in the context of shitty people making great art and whether you can still enjoy it. But to me, it’s also about separating the intention of the artist, or how they feel about the work, versus how it makes ME feel.
You can think of it as an extremely self-centred way of going about life, but what is art and art enjoyment if it isn’t about how you as a person relates to it and how it makes you feel? Objectivity in art and art appreciation is always superseded by how it makes people feel.
Sure, you can break it down mechanically, evaluate using a rubric that is as bias-free as you can make it. But at the end of the day, who gives a shit? It makes you cry or dance and that’s what you want from it, it has done its job.
Listening to those songs again today brought out those emotions again, but if the music, lyrics, performance, and production weren’t as fantastic as they are, I don’t think it would have. A lot of people have written songs about dead parents, some probably even objectively better, but none of those records are Carrie and Lowell to me.
While I don’t think any of the songs on it even breaks my top ten of favourite Sufjan tracks, as a record, its importance to me is unparalleled. It has given me a safe space to grieve, to dive back into that pool of feelings through the lens of melody and poetry. And for that, I will forever be grateful to Sufjan, even if he’s embarrassed by what he made.
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