Sufjan Stevens is one of those very layered, poetic singer-songwriters. I believe him to be the best of the 21st century. His songs come from deeply personal spaces, whether it be dealing with his mother’s death, her struggles with mental illnesses and addiction during his childhood, his queerness, or the loss of his partner. Yet what makes him so compelling is how rarely he confronts these subjects head-on. Instead, Stevens hides behind vivid imagery, classical allusions, and biblical metaphors. This makes his music feel intimate yet scarred, the wailing of a lost boy echoing through cathedrals of memory. So, I believe he’s one artist who does deserve an album breakdown, and in this article, I’m gonna try my best at interpreting my favourite songs from his 7th studio album titled Carrie and Lowell.
Carrie and Lowell
One thing you should know about this album is that it’s miserably sad. If someone says it’s their favourite record, check on them. As Billie Eilish once said, it’s her goat album to cry to, and for good reason.
On Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens mourns the death of his biological mother, Carrie, who passed away from cancer in 2012. He reflects on their complicated relationship: she left him when he was just a year old, struggled with schizophrenia, and battled alcohol and drug addiction. Faced with her deathbed, Sufjan tries to process an immense grief, and the songs move gently through the stages of that grief as he experiences them. The record leans heavily on soft, fingerpicked acoustic guitar that rarely changes drastically throughout, something that initially pulled me towards the album.
Folk simplicity meets raw, unpolished production here: you can hear fingers scraping on strings, breaths caught in the mic, and small vocal imperfections, all of which deepen the album’s haunting intimacy.
Death With Dignity
The title “Death with Dignity” refers to the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which allows physician-assisted death for the terminally ill. We can only assume this is how Sufjan’s mother passed away.
The song is about acceptance, the first step in confronting the complex emotions he’s carried for so long. He calls them the “spirit of my silence” but admits he’s “afraid to be near them.” The track begins with not knowing where to start: “And I don’t know where to begin,” capturing that paralysis that often comes with grief. So, he tries, but “again [he’s] lost [his] strength completely,” and in that vulnerability, all he wants is his mom: “Oh, be near me.” Even in writing the song itself, he’s searching for meaning, asking, “What is that song you sing for the dead?” But he quickly realises it doesn’t matter; she won’t hear it, and he has “nothing to prove”. The song ends with a painful but quiet acceptance: “She’ll never see us again.” It’s a devastating acknowledgement and a fitting start to an album that ultimately explores the process of learning to live with loss.
Eugene
This is my favourite track on the album. Here, Sufjan tries to piece together the good moments, the memories, he shared with his mother, and in doing so, he takes us to Eugene, Oregon, where he spent a few summers with his stepfather Lowell and his mom, Carrie. These were rare moments of stability, when he felt love and happiness. And though the central focus of Carrie & Lowell is his mother’s death, this song feels like an ode to Lowell, a quiet thank you for the small, steady love that shaped parts of his childhood.
The details return to him in fragments: small, mundane scenes that make the song ache with nostalgia.
Remember I pulled at your shirt
Sufjan Stevens, Eugene
I dropped the ashtray on the floor
I just wanted to be near you.
Lines like these reveal that innocent, desperate closeness Sufjan now longs for. He even recalls nicknames like “Subaru”, tiny moments that might seem insignificant but mean everything when you’re looking back at what you’ve lost. The line “I just wanna be near you” repeats throughout the song, weaving together the tenderness of his past with the loneliness of his present.
But by the final verse, that contrast becomes too heavy to bear. The dream of his childhood collapses under the weight of reality.
What’s left is only bittersweet
Sufjan Stevens, Eugene
For the rest of my life, admitting the best is behind me
Now I’m drunk and afraid, wishing the world would go away.
And then comes the final, devastating blow: “What’s the point of singing songs if they’ll never even hear you?” That’s the ache at the centre of “Eugene”, and maybe the whole album: what’s the point of writing, remembering, and creating when the person you’re doing it all for is gone?
Fourth of July
“Fourth of July” is the emotional core of the album and also its most popular track, the one that has resonated most deeply with listeners over the years. It unfolds as a heartbreaking conversation between Sufjan and his mother as she’s dying, intimate enough to feel like we’re eavesdropping on their final moments together. Carrie calls him “my little velvet”, “my firefly”, and “my little dove”, tender nicknames that hold a lifetime of distance, regret, and love.
The refrain “We’re all gonna die” repeats like a chant, but it’s not cold or hopeless. It’s acceptance, a reminder that death is inevitable, and love is the only thing that lingers. By the end, the song feels less like a goodbye and more like a surrender, a quiet letting go.
The only thing
“The Only Thing” is Sufjan at his most vulnerable, confronting suicidal thoughts and the weight of his grief. He asks, “Should I tear my eyes out now? / Everything I see returns to you somehow,” and “Do I care if I survive this?”
The song ends with my favourite lines of the album and also the title of this article:
Should I tear my heart out now?
Sufjan Stevens, The Only Thing
Everything I feel returns to you somehow.
This is the inevitability and truth of grief: he can’t just get over it or move on; he has to carry it with him throughout his life.
In the end, Carrie & Lowell isn’t about finding answers; it’s about learning to live with the fact that there might not be any. Sufjan once called the album a “miscarriage of bad intentions”, not because he regrets making it, but because even after all the songwriting and grieving, the clarity he was searching for still eluded him. But maybe that’s what makes this record so human: it doesn’t try to fix the pain; it just narrates it. And perhaps that’s enough.
Well, my keyboard has drowned in my tears now, and my hands are shaking a bit too much to keep writing, but I’ll be back soon with a Mount Eerie album breakdown to complete my tender sadness/dealing-with-death playlist. Look out for it on Her Campus at MUJ.