{"id":161850,"date":"2025-05-28T03:05:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T07:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/05\/28\/sufjan-stevens-shares-reassessment-of-carrie-lowell-im-kind-of-embarrassed-by-this-album\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T03:05:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T07:05:56","slug":"sufjan-stevens-shares-reassessment-of-carrie-lowell-im-kind-of-embarrassed-by-this-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/05\/28\/sufjan-stevens-shares-reassessment-of-carrie-lowell-im-kind-of-embarrassed-by-this-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Sufjan Stevens Shares Reassessment of \u2018Carrie & Lowell\u2019: \u2018I\u2019m Kind of Embarrassed by This\u00a0Album\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tTen years on from the release of his acclaimed seventh album, Carrie & Lowell<\/em>, Sufjan Stevens has offered a surprising re-evaluation of the record.<\/p>\n

\n\tOriginally released in March 2015, Carrie & Lowell<\/em><\/a> was Stevens\u2019 first studio album since 2010\u2019s The Age of Adz<\/em>, and would ultimately peak at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, while topping the Independent and Folk Albums charts, and hitting No. 2 on the Top Alternative and Rock Albums.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the highs of its success, the record was steeped in sadness and misery, with much of its musical and lyrical content being inspired by the 2012 passing of his estranged mother Carrie, and the relationship with his stepfather, Lowell Brams.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs part of the record\u2019s anniversary reissue, Stevens has collected a batch of demos to accompany its release, pairing it all with an in-depth essay that sees him ruminating on the album\u2019s recording process and his thoughts behind it all.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to NPR<\/em><\/a> ahead of the reissue\u2019s arrival this week, Stevens used the opportunity to share a harsh reassessment of the original album, going so far as to label it \u201cevidence of creative and artistic failure from my vantage point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was trying to make sense of something that is senseless,\u201d he explained. \u201cI felt that I was being manipulative and self-centered and solipsistic and self-loathing, and that the approach that I had taken to my work, which is to kind of create beauty from chaos, was failing me. It was very frustrating. And for the first time I realized that not everything can be sublimated into art, that some things just remain unsolvable, or insoluble. I think I was really just frustrated by even trying to make sense of the experience of grief through the songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDescribing the recording process as \u201cpainful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions\u201d in his essay, Stevens doubles down on his stance, focusing on his mother\u2019s inability to add her own voice into the record\u2019s somewhat voyeuristic narrative.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m kind of embarrassed by this album, to be honest with you,\u201d he explains. \u201cBecause I sort of feel like I don\u2019t have any authority over my mother and her life or experience or her death. All I have is speculation and my imagination and my own misery, and in trying to make sense of it all, I kind of felt like it didn\u2019t really resolve anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tContinuing his retrospective look back at the record, Stevens is also asked whether he regrets having made the record. \u201cYeah, I do. I feel bad,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s just a bummer that my mother\u2019s not alive and can\u2019t speak for herself. What would she say about all this? Maybe she would be proud. I\u2019ll never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe forthcoming anniversary edition of Carrie & Lowell<\/em> also includes a demo version of the track \u201cMystery of Love,\u201d of which a studio version would later appear on the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino\u2019s 2017 film Call Me by Your Name<\/em>, ultimately scoring a nomination for best original song at the 2018 Academy Awards, and best song written for visual media at the 2019 Grammys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years on from the release of his acclaimed seventh album, Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens has offered a surprising re-evaluation of the record. Originally released in March 2015, Carrie & Lowell was Stevens\u2019 first studio album since 2010\u2019s The Age of Adz, and would ultimately peak at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}