Sufjan Stevens’s Problem With America

One stipulation was made before I interviewed Sufjan Stevens by phone last month. It would be nice, a publicist wrote along with a smiley face in an email, to avoid questions about the “50 States Project” “where possible.”

This was an understandable thing to ask. Stevens first attracted notice with two albums, 2003’s and 2005’s , whose orchestral folk-pop was inspired by their title states’ people, places, and pasts. One song conveyed the big-city energy of Chicago, another invoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln, others mourned the industrial decline of Detroit and Flint. The idea, Stevens said back then, was to eventually do 48 more albums for the rest of the country: an audacious proposal that got fans dreaming about the day when Stevens’s satiny voice and lush production would memorialize their own home territory. It didn’t hurt that Stevens, a banjo-wielding Christian whose songs radiated affection for the