Come On! Feel the Illinoise! (Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition – Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream – Sufjan Stevens
Plenty of great options for Illinois—including but not limited to: Wilco, Common, Sinatra, Sun Kil Moon, The Mountain Goats, and Kanye—but c’mon people, I was never going to not pick Sufjan here. Illinois is his masterpiece and produced a dozen or so tracks that I could have gone with.
But in the end, it’s this one. Not my favorite song on the album (though it’s close), but the one that most fully evokes the feeling of the place. The first half is an eruption of spirit: the majesty, the excitement, the bustle, the inspiration, and the sadness. Oh great white city! And then it eases into the glorious beautiful of the second half, when Carl Sandburg visits him and wonders ‘are you writing from the heart?’ God, it’s just so beautiful.