Music
Sufjan Stevens
born 1975 · singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Indie songwriter born in Detroit who lived in the city until age nine and later saluted it on his 2003 album Michigan.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 51- Detroit years
- 1975–1984
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Stevens was born in Detroit and lived there until he was nine, attending the Detroit Waldorf School on the east side before his family moved to Alanson in northern Michigan. He went on to Interlochen Arts Academy and Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where he began playing in local bands. His 2003 album Michigan, the first part of a half-joking plan to record an album for each of the fifty states, is a song cycle about his home state, with songs for Detroit and Flint alongside the Upper Peninsula and the Sleeping Bear Dunes. It sets the decline and hoped-for renewal of Michigan's industrial cities against personal reflections on faith and loss. Illinois (2005) and the Oscar-nominated "Mystery of Love" brought him wider fame. In 2017 he gave part of the proceeds from a charity song and T-shirt to Detroit's Ruth Ellis Center, which serves LGBTQ youth.
Highlights
- Michigan (2003) includes "Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!"
- Illinois (2005) topped Billboard's Heatseekers chart
- Oscar nomination for "Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name
- Co-founded the Asthmatic Kitty record label
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · late 1970s–1984
Detroit Waldorf School
Independent school in the Indian Village area that he attended before his family left Detroit.