Ever since dawn

When I read the Pitchfork interview with Sufjan Stevens yesterday, I wasn't surprised to be charmed by his answers, but I was pretty surprised at how self-deprecating he was. Actually, "self-deprecating" is almost a little too charitable, since it's bordering on self-abuse in a lot of the answers.

But it's somewhat understandable. It seems as though Sufjan is like a lot of the people who are exposed to his music: allergic to hype. The talk has gotten so great that he can't help but try and diffuse his critics by saying what they had all said: that he keeps digging at the same mine, that he's too wimpy and pretty, that they can't understand what everyone else sees in him.

While I understand the need to self-criticize to try and show your critics that you understand what someone might have against you, and while I was impressed that he's able to see through the hype and understand the negatives, I was still rubbed the wrong way when he kept calling his music "adult contemporary". Just because it's not noisy, just because it could *potentially* get played (but wouldn't) on the radio stations that claim to play everything but "heavy metal and rap" doesn't mean it will, and doesn't make it adult contemporary.

It's one of the things that I've loved about Sufjan's music: that it's pretty and pleasant but still requires some readjustment of musical expectations to enjoy; that the arrangements aren't pop, but they're still catchy. Just because it's not the sound of someone playing at deliberate annoyance--the music of that guy who's only out to show you just how weird he is--doesn't put it in the same category of Celine Dion and Phil Collins. I doubt we'll hear "Bad Day" fading into "John Wayne Gacy" on any lite rock stations anytime soon.

What I love about Sufjan Stevens' music is that it's sincere. It might sound like a fifth-grade music recital sometimes, and it might have a few too many references to crying and God, but it never ever strikes me as anything but a deeply felt emotion, and so it's all forgiven. I'd hate to see him deliberately sabotaging his music just because some music bullies said, "Nyah nyah! Why don't you go play your music to some soccer mom...wuss!"

The very fact that this is music that is actually enjoyable means it's a lot more likely to be still be listened to in 20 years. There's a lot of "important" bands from the past that are nearly impossible to listen to now. They may have been challenging and broken barriers and made a nice shiny badge of cool for those people that endured it at the time, but years later, it's the bands that wrote only what they felt instead of only what made the mainstream bristle that endure.