Sufjan Stevens’ 2015 album Carrie & Lowell was a triumph and both a commercial and critical high for the artist. It’s one of Stevens’ two albums to peak inside the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart (the other being its predecessor, 2010’s The Age Of Adz). On Metacritic, it’s also just one of his two studio albums to have a Metascore of at least 90 (Illinois is the other). He even announced a 10th-anniversary reissue of the project recently.
Yet, he’s “kind of embarrassed by” it now.
He said that in a new interview with NPR and explained:
“Because I sort of feel like I don’t 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’t really resolve anything.”
He added that he doesn’t “feel good about myself for making these songs,” and when asked if he regrets making the album, he said, “Yeah, I do. I feel bad. It’s just a bummer that my mother’s not alive and can’t speak for herself. What would she say about all this? Maybe she would be proud. I’ll never know.”
Elsewhere, when asked, “So do you not see yourself doing another vocal album for a while,” he answered, “Yeah, I haven’t really been writing songs — I’ve been just doing a lot more instrumental stuff, and producing other people’s work. I’m kind of allowing myself to live in that world where I don’t have to say anything.”
Read the full interview here.
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