Sufjan Stevens Is Doing Okay

The self-declared “poster child of death in the music world” lost his partner and then got sick. But he's making it a practice to stay optimistic.

- By Craig Jenkins

IN 2023, SUFJAN STEVENS shared on Tumblr that he'd been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a quick-working autoimmune disorder with a vast symptom set that includes persistent pain and muscle weakness. Unable to walk on his own for a while, the prolific singer-songwriter began documenting his physical-therapy journey on his blog. Then, that October, in a shattering dedication note for his tenth album, Javelin, he revealed that his partner, Evans Richardson IV, formerly chief of staff at the Studio Museum in Harlem, had died that April. Stevens is a jarringly autobiographical storyteller but also a famously private person. Suddenly, someone who had never felt compelled to publicly reveal his romantic history, even as he wrote beautiful songs of love and faith, had done so in the most heartbreaking fashion. He has not really been in the public eye since. But he's slowly reappearing. On May 30, Stevens will release the tenth-anniversary edition of Carrie & Lowell. The 2015 album focuses on a few years in Stevens's youth when he lived with his mother, Carrie, and stepfather, Lowell—who would go on to co-found Stevens's label, Asthmatic Kitty—in Oregon. It tackles the fallout from her death and her history of mental illness and substance abuse. Songs like the viscerally bleak “Fourth of July,” with its haunting chorus, “We're all gonna die,” are beloved as depression anthems. The new edition features a 40-page booklet of family photos, some previously unreleased demos, and a gutting essay from Stevens about his mother. On Good Friday, I hopped on a video call with Stevens, who appeared clean-shaven and cherubic, wearing a hat and hoodie in the Catskills studio where he has worked since 2019.

What nudged you back into Carrie & Lowell?