{"id":486595,"date":"2019-06-03T10:28:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T16:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=842371"},"modified":"2019-06-03T10:28:52","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T16:28:52","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-sufjan-stevens-love-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-sufjan-stevens-love-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: Sufjan Stevens, \u2018Love Yourself\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/sufjan_stevens2.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/sufjan-stevens\/\" id=\"auto-tag_sufjan-stevens\" data-tag=\"sufjan-stevens\">Sufjan Stevens<\/a>\u2019 relationship to the LGBTQ community has always been somewhat uneasy. Although he\u2019s avoided directly addressing his sexuality (and he has every right not to), fans have long noticed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.them.us\/story\/sufjan-stevens-music-is-queer-and-he-deserves-an-oscar-tonight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">subtext of queer love and desire<\/a> in his music \u2014 most recently with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NJLs-4J5ZYk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">his songs<\/a> for the movie <em>Call Me By Your Name<\/em> \u2014 but one that could just as easily be ready as a profound, complicated love of God and Stevens\u2019 own grappling with his Christian faith.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t mean Stevens\u2019 measured gestures toward the queer community are half-hearted, or unappreciated. This past week, Stevens released a four-track EP for Pride Month, with two new songs, \u201cLove Yourself\u201d and \u201cWith My Whole Heart,\u201d along with a reprise version of \u201cLove Yourself\u201d and a demo of the song from 1996. According to Stevens himself, the two full compositions were a sincere attempt to \u201cwrite an upbeat and sincere love song without conflict, anxiety or self-deprecation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact that he even needs to make that distinction says volumes about the mood of his past work, but for the most part, he succeeds. \u201cWith My Whole Heart\u201d is a sprawling declaration of emotion, beginning with an uncertain, <em>Carrie &amp; Lowell<\/em>-esque string arrangement and ending with a full-on&nbsp;<em>Age of Adz<\/em> breakdown, by way of guitar solos, rolling drums and glittery synths. \u201cLove Yourself,\u201d while lyrically even simpler than the unabstruse \u201cWith My Whole Heart,\u201d sounds less certain. The new studio recording is more of a slow dance than a rave, with a painted electronic landscape that soars into the clouds and lingers there for the song\u2019s duration. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DtMlHRXBi0s\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">1996 demo<\/a>, done entirely on acoustic guitar, carries even more melancholy; when Stevens sings, in a tinny faraway voice, \u201cLove myself\/I am the one thing I needed,\u201d he sounds cautiously optimistic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/sufjan-stevens-love-yourself-song-842371\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sufjan Stevens\u2019 relationship to the LGBTQ community has always been somewhat uneasy. Although he\u2019s avoided directly addressing his sexuality (and he has every right not to), fans have long noticed a subtext of queer love and desire in his music \u2014 most recently with his songs for the movie Call Me By Your Name \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-486595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 11:18:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}