defending sufjan stevens

Yesterday, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who I believe is the principal editor over at allmusic.com, posted "The Case Against Sufjan Stevens." The essay essentially criticizes Stevens and the adulation he has received from music critics; you can read it here.

I don't have a problem with people not liking Stevens' music, but I found Erlewine's tone and the assumptions that underpin his argument rather troubling. Here is what I wrote as part of an online threaded discussion over at emusic.com:

[This is in response to a fellow emusic subscriber who felt that Erlewine was not attacking Stevens per se, but was instead merely characterizing his music]

I take your point, and I think it is worth distinguishing between criticism or art and attacks on those who produce such art.

But even Erlewine titles his essay "making a case against Sufjan Stephens," suggesting that he is as much troubled by Stevens (and I suppose those who praise him) as he is by the music Stevens writes. "Adolescent fascination" and "precocious" (not to mention "his pretension and childish preciousness") are terms better suited to describe artists than they are to describe art. Certainly his final verdict--"Stevens is an overgrown teenager"--seems rather personal.

What bothered me most about the piece was the way in which Erlewine appears to be truly bothered by Stevens' fascination with art for art's sake and with his refusal to embrace the more solid--dare I say "burly"--aesthetics of the other singer/songwriters he admires (Randy Newman, Sean O'Hagen, et al.). The piece rests upon a disturbing subtext in which Erlewine bemoans Stevens' refusal to be the sort of (male) singer/songwriter that Erlewine can listen to without feeling uncomfortable. Erlewine isn't interested in the "schoolboy," "the drama student," "the adolescent high schooler" with his odd ideas--he's interested in "sophisticated" singer/songwriters. Given the various speculations about Stevens' sexuality that circulate on the Internet, it's hard not to read Erlewine's assessment as having somethign to do with that discussion. Erlewine even pinpoints Stevens "cloying song about Saul Bellow, his adolescent fascination with John Wayne Gacy, Jr." as though there were something distasteful about such interests. It strikes me that he might say something about the songs themselves rather than simply dismiss the sensibility that would find Bellow and J.W. Gacy interesting subject matter.

In fact, the essay contains very little discussion about Stevens' music that is substantive; Erlewine is content to brush it aside as mere "baroque folk-pop". It instead sneers at the kind of artist/persona that Erlewine feels Stevens cultivates, and I find troubling the assumption upon which his critique rests: we should reject artists who are precious and precocious artsy-fartsy overgrown boys who think they're smarter than everyone else and who have strange and silly tastes.

Stream or download several of Stevens' songs here.